EntreLeadership - What Every Business Owner Can Learn From U-Haul's Growth

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

🎯 Figure out your business's next steps in a free consult call with an EntreLeadership® team member.   The hardest part isn’t building the business. It’s growing it without losing what made it great.  In this episode, we’re joined by U-Haul CEO Joe Shoen to learn how leaders can carry a legacy company into the future, make bold changes with confidence, and protect the values that drive long-term growth.   Next Steps: ·      📞 Have a question for the show? Call 844-944-1070 or send us a message. ·      ✉️ Become a better leader in six minutes a week. Get tactical tips sent to your inbox every Friday. ·      📌 Don’t wing it. Get a coach that helps you lead and grow with confidence.  ·      🏢 Attend EntreLeadership Summit. ·      🎤 Attend EntreLeadership Master Series. ·      📖 Order Dave’s book, Build a Business You Love.   Connect With Our Sponsors: ·      Go to Belay Solutions or text ENTRE to 55123 for their free resource! ·      Go to Christian Healthcare Ministries and use code ENTRE for a 50% credit toward your first month of membership. ·      Visit NetSuite today to learn more.   Listen to More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💰 George Kamel   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building a successful business is hard. Making sure it stays successful is even harder. And Joe Schoen has spent nearly 40 years learning that firsthand as the CEO of U-Haul. His parents founded the company in 1945 and when he took over, he had to answer the question every second generation owner faces. How do you keep a company growing without messing up what made it great in the first place? On this episode, Joe shares how U-Haul continues to solve customer problems 80 years after they started and the leadership principles that have helped the company thrive across multiple generations. If you want to know the secret to building a business that outlast you, listen in.

Okay, so Joe, I've done a little research, but I want our audience to hear this. I want them to hear the origin story of how U-Haul comes to play because we love. love how, you know, businesses start to just become a solution to a problem. And I want to hear about this road trip that I think is the origin story. Share that with us. Well, my father ended up in the Navy during World War II and he was stationed in Corona, California. So when the European theater shut down and we declared victory there, they started letting people go home. So in June, before the Pacific War was resolved, He was released and my mother and him, she lived in a little trailer.

They had an infant son, and now they needed to get back to basically the Portland, Oregon area where they lived. So they had a 44-2-door, and so they could only take a certain amount of stuff, and they ended up, even though they didn't have a lot of possessions, they gave things away because they couldn't go. So my father observed that they were renting trailers in downtown Los Angeles. So he went to Los Angeles and tried to rent a trailer. They would not rent him one to take to Oregon. They would just rent it around Los Angeles and bring it back to the same location. So they both thought about that. And then they started driving home.

And they had that time, it probably took them four or five days to make that trip. And they'd been in business before the war in the barber and beauty salon business. So they both were kind of business oriented. So they talked about it all the way home, how many people had the same problem they had, which is they couldn't get home. And basically the day they got there, they went into business. They had neither one ever remembers who came up with the name U-Haul. They were both just, you know, how you would chat.

And they started. They had $5,000 of savings. And so they started this with $5,000 and just kept reinvesting and reinvesting. So it's kind of a fun story. it's got a, you know, so many people after the war were full of energy and they wanted to make America a better place. Yeah. That's kind of their story.

Yeah. I love that, that neither one of them could remember who came up with the name, but it is a brilliant name, isn't it? Oh, it's just a great, you know, I mean, to talk about a blessing. Having that name, so many people are struggling to get brand recognition or have to make up a phonetic name that means nothing. And here we have a, you know, largely a generic name that describes the price. process. It's just, it's wonderful. Yeah. So what do you, what have you heard from your father and your

mother that you can recall about their early days of getting it going? Because what I love is, is that we're going back into history. What an incredible time in American history. Yes. Post-war. I mean, you just think about where we are from a technology standpoint, and they come up with this idea. And I'd love to hear more about some of their early struggles. Here's a good one. My mother ran the office, And my father did the roadwork. So her name was Anna Mary. And so he got her to continue to use her maiden name, Anna Mary Carty.

So he would tell people she was the boss. And he had to do it because he couldn't tell her no. So that was how he managed to use her as the fall guy. No one ever saw her. Right. It would be A.M. Cardi. He never said it was a woman. He just said, A.M. Carty won't let me do that.

That's brilliant. And so he kind of leveraged. that. He traveled almost constantly. He would ordinarily would drive. And then later, when he had more affluence, he would take the train or eventually fly. But he would pick up hitchhikers to drive while he could sleep. You can't imagine that today. No. But he would, there'd be a hitchhiker, pick him up, says, we're going to here. You drive, I'm going to sleep. Wow. If you can imagine that. No. It's just a whole different different way of going about things.

And the whole idea of having rental agents was, you know, a new idea. And so he, again, could not go. He could work kind of Portland to Seattle pretty well, pretty effectively, maybe get down to the Bay Area. But beyond that, the distances were too great. So he developed a program, and I don't know if was my mother or him, but my mother would write these letters and say somebody wanted to move to. Atlanta, they'd say, okay, you go to Atlanta, here's the equipment, here's the price.

When you get there, find a very prosperous service station, go in, give them this paperwork, and leave the trailer there. And it was a handwritten letter from my mother that explained the deal and that we wanted them to be an agent, and they would hopefully sign up. A lot of those people just needed a little more income to get over the deal. And so, U-Haul would provide that. They were all mechanically oriented so they could repair the equipment. That's correct.

So we could operate at a distance that we couldn't have done on our own because you had this network of people. But it was premised on the honesty of the public and the honesty of the independent operator. And of course there were some disappointments, but by and large, a whole bunch of honest people just kind of made it work. Yeah. One of the great qualities of U-Haul to me is that in the early days and it stayed, this way is that it speaks to the autonomy of the human spirit. I want to do it myself and they give me the opportunity. I see you're shaking your head. I hope I'm not off on that, but I think that's a unique characteristic of your business. Is that true? People want to do it themselves for a whole

variety of reasons. You'd be shocked with how many people literally walk in and want to rent and they're moving and they've never contacted us any way we can tell before. That day, they're moving, they walk in, they want a vehicle, and whatever's going on in their life, God only knows. That's right. And we just say, sure, let's figure it out. And that's been kind of, I think our unique selling proposition to the public, we pretty much will move you wherever you want to go.

I mean, you're going to have to pick a really odd place. We won't say, okay, sure, you know. So it's, and of course, the customer can't leave with us anything in the, you know, a deposit can measure it with what we're going to give them. So we're all kind of trusting each other on here. And they reciprocate, but they expect us to extend ourselves a little bit and not do something so crassess, sell their information or overly contact them. My mother said that working at U-Haul was a vocation, not a job. She said, you have to want to work here. You're here to help people. And we've kept that mantra. What is our primary?

thing is to help the public. And they need to move. They don't want to move. They need to move for some reason. That's right. And then our job is to see how can we help them. And you can't stimulate moving. In other words, we can't have like a sale and everybody moves. They don't do that. But when they need to move, they need to move. And so today, we'll rent you a truck at 11 o'clock of the night, you know, on your handheld, and if that's your situation, for whatever reason, we'll extend ourselves and figure a way to get that done. So it's just kind of became our challenge, and technology has just made that better. Yeah. What's one of the most important things you've done to protect the values of this organization? Well, one is, is keeping my family involved.

So I had two brothers who were in this with me. They're both basically retreat. tired now, but that was a strong thing. And to encourage family participation, we have any number of people who three generations have worked for the company. During COVID, I told people, if you got a 14-year-old kid who needs someplace to go during the day, you bring them down here, we'll put them to work, we'll see if we can pay them or not, but you need a place to take your kid, we'll just bring them to work. And people remember that. Yeah. They remember. They know you treated them like it was for real. And so many places today have restrictions on who can do what with family relations if it's a bad thing. We've always said it's a good thing.

And sure, let's try it. And mostly it works out. So I think the family is a big part of it. We're also Judeo-Christian without being sappy. So, you know, I send out a Christmas message. And it goes to people of all faiths or no faith. I mean, it doesn't just, you know, but people appreciate that without, trying to compel them, that I said, well, this is kind of how we look at this, and this will be okay.

Yeah. So, you know, I think that that sort of thing, and then we do a lot with self-education. So there's almost nothing we won't give you access to if you work here. There's almost nothing that's so confidential or so touchy we won't let you have access to. And people who want to make a career, they're interested in learning more. And so they'll want to get out of their lane into another, but we'll say, okay, you can learn about that. You know, we'll give you access to all that information.

And I think people appreciate that because we're not holding them back. And as a result, we end up promoting mainly from within. And if you took the top hundred people here, at least 80 of them started at the entry-level clerical position. I want to ask you about that because I think that's got to be, pretty delicate in how you decide who gets promoted from within versus we say we don't have somebody. I think I got to go get them from the outside. I'd love your philosophy or whatever the methodology is on how you decide to go from outside in. And then what are you, what's that criteria to bring somebody in? Our process is to post all jobs two weeks only inside.

Okay. So first of all, if you're interested, you're getting first cracked. Right. Okay. And we believe in the diamond in the rough, which is, okay, fine, life didn't cause you to have X, Y, and Z, but do you want to learn? Do you want to go ahead? Let's give it a shot. There is no handbook exactly on how to run U-Haul. It's basically one person teaches the next person. And so that becomes a, we don't call it mentoring, but in fact, it in fact is mentoring. So people teach, they are expected to teach. their team what the job is. And some people, you know, they like it and they just prosper in it. So where we end up in a jam is sometimes with IT professionals and then with attorneys and accountants. But even there, we have a guy working at our legal department whose mother works here. He started here, you know, before he had a legal degree.

And he's now got a legal degree and he works here and he's doing great. So the other one you see here is people tend to stay. So we have a lot, a 20-year person here is very ordinary, not it's almost why are you celebrating it, that there's so much of it. But that's a good thing. It gives us a lot of continuity. Sure. And also, again, if you, in 20 years, a person will have highs and lows. And so they know you'll stick by them because everything wasn't perfect for 20 years.

Right. And they get a feeling of owner. ownership or participation. We started an employee stock ownership plan 30 years ago, purely for that reason to so people could say they own part of the place. That's right. And if you were at the retail level, as soon as you're vested, we put owner on your name tag.

And you'd be surprised how well that works with the public. The public will come into a store and see one person with owner. They'll walk over to that person because they want to deal with somebody who they feel has an interest in their success. That's so good. You know, retention's the name of the game. No. I mean, that's what every CEO wants because that's productivity, efficiency, profitability.

If you were going to say on a napkin, if you're sitting down with, you know, small business owners, you go, okay, these couple things will drive retention because they can't give stock. Yes. What would you tell that small business owner? I think the first thing is opening things up so it's not secretive. Too many small business people think it's a secret. And not to worry, the person's not going to be computer. with you or let them see what the business is and they may find part of it they're interested in.

So I think that's a big part of it. We do business with over 22,000 independent dealers. Wow. And so they have all the trauma and drama, you know, all these different things going. And it's a wonderful thing to see this. I had a woman come in about three months ago and she's out of Minnesota. And she's taking over for her father, who's now 72. but it was interesting. We could talk about business as absolute equals. She has all the same problems,

and she was considering going into debt to add self-storage to her location. And I told her, well, let me tell you how we do it. That's kept her in the business. It's an unusual thing to see a kind of an upscale 40-year-old woman wanting to run a U-Haul location. But she does. I guarantee you, if you go there, you're going to get the best service for 50 miles. She's sharp. So I think there's an awful lot of just being genuine and letting people see. There's just you can grow and learn. And I have a lot of people who have worked here for maybe 10 years and went on to another career.

And they'll send me a note every once in a while. Appreciate it. I'm applying some of the things I learned. Well, I'm happy for them. Right. I'm happy. They learned something. And their career took a different turn.

Maybe they'll come back to us someday later, or maybe they'll go into business for themselves or whatever. It's all great, as far as I'm concerned. I believe that capitalism is what really distinguishes America. And sure, there's bad parts of capitalism, but there's so many good parts. And if we can encourage more people to participate, just everybody's going to do better. Yeah, love that. You graduate from Harvard business, MBA. you come work for the company.

I think you told me about eight years. Then you decide to go off on your own and start something. And I love this. So the starters, the people that want to start. And that's business is successful today. Yes. And still serves you. So serves the public.

Which is great. I know times have changed. But what are some fundamentals that you can look back on to say, this is what I did right. And this is, if you're thinking about starting something, This is what I think you need to know. I went into the retail business, and I did that because I had a professor at school. He says, if you want to be successful in retail, pick something no one's retailing.

Yeah, that's good. Which made sense. So I went into auto aircraft and marine paints, selling the paints. And we retailed it like a supermarket. Price on every can, you know, everything's displayed. How did you figure out that that was something that needed to be done? Well, as a kid, I was always around cars. And so I would try to do paint and refinishing stuff, and you're always treated as what do you hear for because you're not a professional in the field.

Okay, so early on, I sponsored classes at the local high school. All these people are, there's car and boat and airplane nuts every place. So I tried to attract them to the store. The other key was having very finite resources. It just sharpened you up. I came out of U-Haul, which relatively has infinite resources. And here I am, I'm, you know, I borrowed some money, I had some money, and that was, that if you ran out of that, you were going to be in real trouble.

So that was so wonderful because we got to where I could tell the team on Friday, we need X on Monday to cover the bills, and by God we'd sell it. Just because they knew I was telling them the truth, and we needed so many dollars to come in the place, and they'd just go out and work with the customers and make a living. So I think the finite resources is critical. It just takes all the baloney out of your deal. In other words, all these, which turn out to be mistakes largely, these things, I need this big system or that.

No, you just need to help the customer. And I developed the habit early on because I didn't know everything. A customer would come and ask for a product. I says, what are you going to do with it? They'd tell me, and I'd say, if I had some in three days, would you buy some? He said, maybe. I said, well, I'll have it in three days. And that's how I built my, my,

inventory and my selection was off of customer preferences not my own and I think that's so important that you understand the customers who's footing the bill yeah give them what they want well you have a great quote that I pulled from an interview you've done in the past and I wanted to share it this is perfect time you said the customer will teach me what they want then it's my job to figure out a way to get it for them exactly so simple yet gets overlooked a lot oh it's it's I developed loyalty with customers because That's all they want, they want to get something done.

And you're going to have to be in the price point somewhere's reasonable, but they're not going to fight over four or five percent. Get them what they want and do it with a smile, they'll come back. And that has served me well. And that really helped me when I came back to U-Haul because I had a total different orientation that I did coming out of business school. Sure.

We get right back to that episode. But first, for a lot of entrepreneurs, Health care is one of the most unpredictable line items in the budget. That's why I want you to look at Christian Healthcare Ministries. CHM is not health insurance. It's a budget-friendly, faith-based alternative to insurance. Instead of premiums that keep climbing and coverage that keep shrinking, CHM gives you a more predictable monthly cost,

with programs starting at just $115 a month. Lower monthly costs can free up capital to build your margin, grow your team, and reinvest in your business. And as a faith-based organization, CHM aligns with Christian business owners who want their health care dollars handled in a way that reflects their values. That's stewardship, not just savings. CHM even offers a groups program for small businesses

that want to provide a health care sharing option to their teams. And right now, CHM is offering new members a 50% credit towards their first month of membership. Go to CH Ministries.org slash entre and use promo code Entree. That's C.H.ministries.org slash entree and use the promo code Entree. Now let's get back to our episode. I want to ask you about confidence for someone coming in. And so many of the people that are watching and listening to this, Joe, are in the family business.

And here you come in, second generation, having done well, you went out on your own, you come back in. What was it like emotionally for you to come into this, you know, as second generation? and now I'm coming in, I'm going to make some changes. What can we learn from that? Well, of course, it's very emotional. And I came from a large family. Yeah. So there's all those relationships kind of intertwine

and conflicts grow and closeness grows. Both are happening simultaneously. In my case, my father kind of thought he'd done everything that could be done with you all and kind of scoffed at the idea you could do more. Does that make sense? Yeah. He was like, have it at it.

Yeah, I thought, well, hell, this is a launching pad. This isn't a finished piece of work. And so one of the first things we did was we reimagined all the equipment and started putting these big graphics on them, which were now fairly well known for. He thought that was the biggest waste of money you could conceive of. and it really kind of broke my heart to have to push that through against his wishes, which is what we did. You know, this is the opportunity in the family business,

is the business going to go with the life of the person, or is it going to go with the life of the corporation? Right. And so we had to make a decision that was going to go with the life of the corporation, not with the life of my father. Wow. So that's kind of a, I mean, it's a good thing, but it's a disappointment. Yeah. And, but, you know, we were able to do it. And now I'm kind of on that same edge myself.

Right. Okay, what are we going to do? How are we going to do this? So I want to ask you, how did you honor your father and his legacy and input, but also make the decision that you felt you need to make? Well, again, it was very contentious. I think that the fact that we succeeded in the end, you know, does that. And he had a great body of accumulated business knowledge. He was a writer. He would write everything down and said, well, here's what we're doing and why we're doing it. Then he'd distribute that. Well, so I came in here.

We had a wealth of this information, literally thousands of pages of it. So I studied that stuff constantly saying, well, what's the point here? What lesson did he learn in the third year of business that I need to leapfrog to that and not have to go through that whole learning experience that he did, now the business was bigger, we just needed to apply it. And one of his writing says is that no advertising shall be done unless the advertising value of the equipment is maximized. Okay, so we had that situation, the equipment looked drab.

And so a person on my board of directors read the same thing, and he came in to be one day, And he says, I'm telling you now to cancel all yellow page advertising. That was our big expenditure. We were spending about 30 million a year on advertising in the yellow pages. He said, cancel it. I says, I'll go out of business. So that put me in panic mode.

And yellow pages had like a 45-day lead, you know, from when you started to when they, so if I could get this solved in 30 or 40 days, I could present and says, no, we're going to do both. Right. And that's what we did. We just maxed out. It was a, you know, just a everybody all day long, every day, one subject. How can we improve this? And at that time, we did focus groups.

You could, you know, present things to a group of people. And first couple of them, they just barfed it back at us and humiliated us. But then we got it right, and they said, well, of course you can do this. And it was funny because the first one they really liked was New York and the Statue of Liberty. And they said, well, that's what U.Hall should be. saying, you're American? We're Americans. Of course. We were a little nervous putting the Statue of Liberty or are we claiming it or something? No, we're not claiming it. We're celebrating it. And the customer there in that case or the focus group people said it's exactly the right thing

to do. And we started off on that and it's been a wonderful success. We call it giving back to the community that supports us. So we feature cities or states and something kind of oftentimes you don't quite know about, you know, diamond mines in Arkansas, things that are real, but you're not aware of them. And people enjoy it. And it's been a wonderful way to distinguish the equipment. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of billboards. That's okay. But as soon as we did this, it became interesting. I think it's brilliant. I think it actually pays off the brand. It makes it about you. You're driving along or you're driving it. We see it. And there's just identity. We know this. We just all identify with our place.

Yes. Whether that's a city, county, town, state. Very much. People like that and they, you know, there are people who, if we could, they would like to choose what it says on the truck. Of course. But this is impossible. There's no way. But the idea is they actually know they're driving and they've got this information on the truck. Yeah. We knew people liked that. But getting it to the exact right thing took us a little bit of work. But it was because my board members said cancel your advertising. And it put me, I was just terrified because business must advertise or go out of business.

So that's kind of the story behind that. Great lesson I want to point out to our audience, because it's constraints that makes us most innovative. And here was another constraint. Totally. And you solved it. Yeah, constraints are what gets your brain going. Yeah.

My father used to say, you never beat. Either get fat and quit, or you get tired and quit. That's good. It's all about quitting. Don't quit. And so I take that to heart every day. But what gets you going, of course, is competition or constraints. And anytime you're in that deal, well, now you start to really sharpen your game.

And who wins is the customer? Yeah, that's exactly right. The customer gets a better deal. That's exactly right. And that's what business is supposed to deal. Find a better deal for the customer. You are approaching 40 years as CEO. Yes.

With the company much longer, but 40 years, which I don't have my data in front of me, but you've got to be one of the few that's still in that. that game, if not the longest. That's incredible. It speaks to longevity, and there's so much that adds to that longevity. I'd love for you to reflect for us and teach us at the same time. But what have been the keys to you've been able to stay at the top as long as you have? So constraints is a big thing that keeps me sharp.

And we have a slogan we appropriated from somebody, which is you become what you think about. So I go to the grocery store. I'm thinking about U-Haul and I see how they're doing Cheerios and I'm thinking, well, how does that translate to what I'm doing? It's, it's, because it does translate. And so I'm constantly doing that and I encourage team members, what can you bring? What can you see? What did you experience this? What's the lesson that comes out of this?

And when I visit a store, I try to always ask the manager, it says, you've answered, you've answered a lot of questions for me. Is there something I need to know that I don't know? And you'd be shocked what they tell you. Because they've been hoping someone would ask them. Okay, they're grinding it out, and they've learned a couple of precious things. And because I ran a store myself for many years, this paint store I had, I believe that the people running there

are as competent as the people here. That rank is does not determine competence. It's just by accident that you're in different spots. Competence is competence. And so I've gotten so, I've gotten so much help from store managers who, you know, just tell me, here's what would make this go better. I've got two children in the business, and they're pretty hot.

Not that they're smarter than everybody, but they want to do this. They want to do it. They appreciate their coworkers. They're probably going to be successful. Yeah. You travel famously all around the country to locations. You've mentioned a bit of it there. what is the key lesson to you showing up all the time and making sure that you're plugged in?

What does it do for you as the CEO? Oh, well, it absolutely just focuses me down on what's important because home offices tend to get distracted. They're more concerned with reporting than results. They'll endlessly go on about how to report them. Well, what was the result? once you know, I don't need to know much about it. I got a basic idea now let's go. So that keeps you in that frame of mind constantly

because the people at that level, they don't have to deal with the Securities and Exchange Commissioner, the federal government taxes. They're just trying to help the customer. And so if they'll give me a leg up or a piece of information, boy, I can be deadly effective. I look like I'm real smart. And really, I'm not that smart.

I just said, oh, okay, that's, That's pretty clear. Sometimes, it's interestingly, they have to explain something to me several times. Because so much of me being too high in rank or already making a good living, it all fights against you learning. Yeah. And so, and I've been amazed with some people who are very patient and will tell me something two and three times because they know it's important and they believe I want to know it, but

they've got to just repeat it. I wonder if your example just funnels down to the rest of the organization. I assume it does, but with you as the top dog, you know, having that openness where people can reach out to you. And my guess is, is that other leaders take note of that and they go, hey, if I do that, this continues to go all the way down. Have you seen that to be true? Oh, absolutely. And I'll give a good example. When I listed my phone number, I was on a TV show and it was like a, a couple.

consumer show and they were critical. And I said, well, you know, I don't know the facts on that, but I says, I'll give you my phone number. If that comes up, give me a call, I can, I can deal with it. And so I did that on the show. And then that ran, the first night, it was just, my phone exploded. I mean, it was, I must have gotten a hundred calls. But, of course, it tapered off after a little while. And I began to understand it. So then I went to our retail managers and told them, I wanted them to put their cell phone on their business card. And of course, some of these are single women. We have every thing you can imagine.

And there was a great deal of trepidation by some people. And I said, well, let's talk about it. I says, I do it and I can tell you who calls me. And I can tell you who doesn't call me. And what they learned was that it actually gave them more power in the customer's mind. if they would share their cell phone. The customer could call you at 2 in the morning.

It's possible. That doesn't happen very often. Mostly people respect it, and they say, well, you must be a decision maker. If you can reach out like that, you're somebody of importance in your organization. But I had, particularly with women who were a little bit, you know, how women they want to see who's calling and all that.

And I said, well, you know, I just don't get the cranked call. I just don't get them. Most people try to respect it and they call you because it's important. And that flowed right down. That maybe took a year from start to finish. And I never compelled a single person, but I said, it's working for me. If you've tried, if it doesn't work for you, we'll pull back. And people really appreciated that. And, you know, today, of course, the phone is business. I mean, everybody wants to do business on the phone. So I try to hold U-Haul to five layers of management, myself. Then I have what I call executive vice presidents, then regional vice presidents,

then people who run a business unit like my daughter does, and then people who run a store, so five levels. Okay. And it's very important to hold it as because of, if you ever did that game in grade school where you tell something and it goes around the room and it comes out wrong. Well, that happens in organizations too. And so I try to shorten that distance.

And then I oftentimes will communicate and copy all these people. So you get the same message your boss got. So it tends to help clarify between the two of them, well, what are we going to do today? And they go, okay, not that I want to manage them. I don't want to manage them at all, but I'd like them to hear the same message. And then they get more confidence, well, we're really going to do this. It's not some wild scheme. We've thought about it a little bit.

But keeping the line chain and command as short as possible makes people participate. So a lot of times if I'm traveling, I may have all five of those people in the same room at the same time. I try to always take a picture of it because here's everybody at U-Haul. Nobody else, we got nobody to call, like that TV show. It's a joke. Who are you going to call? You're all here.

Make a decision. Yeah, that's right. Make the play. That's what it is. And people appreciate that. Oftentimes at an anniversary of a long-term person, they'll ask someone to say, well, why'd you stay? The most typical answer is, I was allowed to make decisions. Wow.

They value that. Of course, not all decisions are right, but they were allowed to make them. There's a principle of social justice. It's called subsidiarity. And it basically says that a person should be involved in a decision that affects them. And so we get that kind of going. And it changes people's buy-in entirely. Oh, it's such a great lesson.

I want to make sure the audience doesn't miss this. What you're speaking to is the soul of a human who longs to be free. And yet freedom doesn't mean that I work for myself as an entrepreneur. freedom, autonomy, is the fancy word. What you just touched on is huge because so many leaders miss it. Yes. Because they think I have to control everything as opposed to allowing people, what you so beautifully described is that they sense freedom.

Yes. And boy, that creates that loyalty. Yes. You know, it really speaks to the soul. And that's interesting you'd say that. I don't mind talking about that to my team. But I'm not sure I want to speak about souls to the American public or not. I don't know how they're going to take it.

Right, right. But, yeah, that's fundamental to us. And if you go back to our founding documents, that all resonates with there. If you go back and read it now as an adult as opposed to when you were in grade school, you go, oh, I get this. They were speaking of fundamental truths. And there's true in business or any organized behavior. Yeah.

You've created freedom of speech in U-Haul. If we think about it, if we pull that out of a political context and just say, you've allowed people. the freedom to weigh in, you've allowed your customers the freedom to weigh in by calling your cell phone. Yes. And they now appreciate that and they think they have, they're vested in a good outcome. Yeah.

Instead of vested in a bad outcome or think that this is, we're going to have to have a fight. That's right. No, we don't have to fight. Explain it to me. I just don't understand. Yeah. If I understood, I wouldn't oppose you. Yeah.

That's so good. And, you know, so that's, you're hitting it nail on the head there and it's very much a, you know, it's rooted in the, in the nature of humans. That's right. Joe, I'd love for you to share a story of a customer who called your phone, whether you answered, voicemail, followed up. Because I think this is so fantastic that you allow that and for the right reasons. What's something that sticks out to you as a memorable interaction? Well, I'll pick one on self-storage.

We're in the self-storage business, and self-storage is, I think, very misunderstood. you see some people think it's a sign of Americans over affluence and their acquisitiveness. That's not been my experience at all, although I maybe thought that when this first started, and I had to learn. And people, customers educated me, and they particularly educate me when their options get limited. So I got a call one time out of Maine. And it was a woman, and she explained that her and her sister each had a storage room at our store in Portland. but it was more than they could afford,

and they needed it combined. And I said, okay, we'll go down to the store and tell them that. Well, we're in an assisted living. We can't really get there. And I said, well, you know, I don't know what I can do for. He says, well, we need to combine it. I said, okay, but I mean, that means we'd have to throw away some of your things. That's very personal and also fraught with legal problems.

So this woman says, well, you know, why don't you call your store and see if there's someone there who would do that for us? So I called the store and there was a woman there who was somewhat mature. She says, sure, I understand that. I've got, you know, older relatives. I'll go in and sort out their stuff and put it all in one room and throw away what I'll determine. So she did that. And then I called the people back and says we did that and now your rent is basically cut in half. Well, they started sending me Christmas card.

these two sisters. And then one of them died. Okay, and she sends me a notice that her sister died. And this one on, I'm going to say for more than five years, okay? They had no other relatives. They were just there. And towards the end of the deal, she called me and reached out and wanted to thank me for this. And I thought, I've been keeping your stuff.

You've never even seen it. You're paying me. I should be thanking you. Okay? So it got me to have a better understanding of this. But I was in Santa Barbara, California at our storage location there. And a woman who was maybe 20 years my senior approached me and said, are you the boss? And I said, yes, how can I help you, thinking she probably had a complaint.

She says, I want to give you my room. And I said, well, why would you want to give me your room? She says, well, I want you to share everything in there with the rest of the community here. And I said, okay, but, you know, there's social services. How about we make some phone calls and see if we can't get, she says, no, I don't need social services. She's, I need to give you the key to the room so you can share this with everybody. And I said, well, where are you going to live? She's, I'm going to live in my car with my cat.

And it was, to me, this was like, you know, needs an intervention. But she explained to me, no, we don't need an intervention. I need your help. to share these things with these other people. I said, okay, well, we can certainly do that. Well, that got me to start at essentially every one of our stores, what I call a customer reuse center. She explained to me that life changes,

and all these things are important, but they're no longer relevant to her life, but they need to go to somebody else to whom they are relevant. Wow. And so I started these reuse centers, So people who have something in storage that no longer fits their life can put it there with the assurance. It's not going to an auction.

It's going to be someone else who stores here can help themselves to it. And the classic one is a set of weights. Because a lot of people, their kid moves away. He leaves a set of weights. They put it in storage. You don't know what to do with it. But weights never go bad.

Right. And so somebody will put a set of weights in there. Of course, some 12-year-old boy comes by. can't believe his good luck, and he drags them home, and, you know, the life goes on. So this, but she explained to me this whole deal of how people want this sense of community and how these things are important, but being important doesn't mean they need to hang on to them. It means they need to go back to another human to appreciate it or enjoy it.

And that was so humbling to me. It was just, and when I first started, people predicted disaster. You know, so we have cameras. So we studied a bunch of the pictures. You'd be shocked how many people would carefully take every nut and bolt for a bed frame, put it all in a little package and put it with the bed frame in there. So the next person who got the bed frame had all the fasteners. All those things that you've experienced in your own life.

Because they understand the same thing. It has nothing to do with money. That bed was their kids or their parents. And they wanted it to go to somebody who needed a bed. And it's given me a total different approach to self-storage. This is stuff that's of tremendous psychological value to people. And we need to respect that. I was going to ask you, what is the source of your deep care and passion for customers,

which is ultimately people? It's just very obvious to me. And I wonder, what do you identify as that source? Well, I think it's just where this is all our common humanity. and, of course, I'll lose my soul if I don't. I mean, literally, I'll lose my soul. And, of course, that's the worst thing that you could do to yourself.

And, you know, so I think it's almost selfish, if that makes sense. Sure. But if I take care of them, I'm doing, why do we even have a business? We talk of expanding circles of responsibility. So first yourself, your family, your work group, your country,

and ultimately the world, and you have to fit in and provide a function, a helpful function in there to justify breathing air and drinking the water. So I take that deadly seriously, and a business makes money because it has to. It serves people because that's its objective. It has to make money, or it will go away. You won't be allowed to serve people next year. But your goal is not making money. Your goal is serving people and you have to make money to do that. And so that's kind of how we approach it. And I think it's worked good for me. It's been reasonable for me. I have more than an abundance. It's, you know, it's just worked well. But I think in an odd way, it's almost being selfish. Final thought. I want you to speak to the tired, discouraged leader. No matter what

level they're on, they're just down. What would you say to them if you had lunch with them today? First, look at your team. Your team deserves leadership. That's your job. The primary, we say leadership is the primary force that stimulates, motivates, and coordinates the organization and the accomplishment of its objectives. They're counting on you providing leadership. So pick it up. You want them to be a unit of production? Well, you need to be a unit of leadership then. That's the exchange. So pick it up and let's get going again.

And then, of course, it's never as bad as it seems. You know, I've been personally bankrupt. I've had the organization go bankrupt. I've had plenty of reversals. It's never as bad as it seems. Get back in. Start working towards a solution. You'll get there.

So if you get discouraged, Look at your team. They're good people and they've helped you and you need to help them and that's by doing your function as a leader. Joe, what a good final word. This has been so fun. I know I'm better for it. I know our audiences as well and we just want to thank you. Appreciate you. All right. Appreciate it. Thank you. Joe knew that if U-Haul was going to last, it couldn't stay exactly the same. It had to keep improving, but it also couldn't lose the values, culture, and customer focus that made it successful in the first place. One thing I appreciate about Joe's story is that he's still open to learning. He's still asking questions, listening to other perspectives,

and looking for ways to make the business better. That's what great leaders do. They don't assume they have all the answers. They keep seeking them out. And that's exactly what Entree Leadership coaching is all about. If you want to grow your business but don't know where to start, our team of coaches will help you identify what's really holding you back and give you a clear plan to move forward with confidence. Just click the link in the description to schedule your free 30-minute consultation call with a coach today.

And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, share, and subscribe for more real-world leadership content. I'm your host Dave Ramsey and this is Entree Leadership.