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- [00:06]
Narrator
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 outlasts you, listen in.
- [00:55]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
Okay, so Joe, I've done a little research, but I want our audience to hear this. I want them to hear the Oracle origin story of how U Haul comes to play, because we love how, you know, businesses start to just become a solution to a problem solution. And I want to hear about this road trip that I think is the origin story. Share that with us.
- [01:15]
Joe Schoen
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 442 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. It's 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. And that's kind of their story.
- [03:09]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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?
- [03:15]
Joe Schoen
Oh, it's just a great. You 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 process. It's just. It's. It's wonderful.
- [03:32]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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 I. What I love is, is that we're going back into history. What an incredible time in American history.
- [03:45]
Joe Schoen
Yes.
- [03:45]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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.
- [03:55]
Joe Schoen
Here's a good one. My mother ran the office, and my father did the road work. 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. Cause he couldn't tell her no. Right. So that was how he managed. He used her as the fall guy. No one ever saw her.
- [04:20]
Narrator
Right.
- [04:21]
Joe Schoen
It'd be AM Carty. He never said it was a woman. He just said, am Carty won't let me do that.
- [04:25]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
That's brilliant.
- [04:26]
Joe Schoen
And so he. He kind of leveraged that. He. 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 gonna sleep.
- [04:54]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
Wow.
- [04:54]
Joe Schoen
If you can imagine that. No, it's just a whole different way of going about things. And the whole idea of having rental agents was 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 it 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 there 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.
- [06:21]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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?
- [06:41]
Joe Schoen
Yes. 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, you know, whatever's going on in their life, God only knows.
- [07:04]
Narrator
That's right.
- [07:04]
Joe Schoen
And we should say, sure, let's figure it out. And that's been kind of, I think, our unique selling proposition to the public. Pretty much, we'll 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. And of course, the customer can't leave with us anything in a deposit, commensure 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 crass as 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.
- [08:04]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
That's right.
- [08:05]
Joe Schoen
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 a sale. And everybody moves. They don't do that.
- [08:15]
Narrator
So.
- [08:15]
Joe Schoen
But when they need to move, they need to move.
- [08:17]
Narrator
Yeah.
- [08:17]
Joe Schoen
And so today we'll rent you a truck at 11 o' clock in the night, you know, you know, on your handheld. And if that's your situation, for whatever reason, we'll, we'll, we'll extend ourselves and figure a way to get that done. So it's just kind of became, became our challenge. And technology has just made that better.
- [08:36]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
- [08:37]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
What's one of the most important things you've done to protect the values of this organization?
- [08:44]
Joe Schoen
Well, one is keeping my family involved. So I had two brothers who were in this with me. They're both basically retired 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 him to work. And people remember that. 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. 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.
- [10:47]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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 gotta 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?
- [11:13]
Joe Schoen
Our process is to post all jobs two weeks only inside. So first of all, if you're interested, you're getting first crack, Right? Okay. And we believe in the diamond and 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 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 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. It's almost. Why are you celebrating it? There's so much of it. But that's a good thing. It gives us a lot of continuity.
- [12:36]
Narrator
Sure.
- [12:36]
Joe Schoen
And, 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 and they get a feeling of ownership or participation. We started an employee stock ownership plan 30 years ago purely for that reason. 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.
- [13:18]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
That's so good. You know, retention's the name of the game. 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 small business owners, you go, okay, these couple things will drive retention because they can't give stock.
- [13:36]
Joe Schoen
Yes.
- [13:37]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
What would you tell that small business owner?
- [13:39]
Joe Schoen
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 competing 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.
- [14:03]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
Wow.
- [14:03]
Joe Schoen
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 it was, she was considering going into debt to add Self Storage to her location. 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 a upscale 40 year old woman wanting to run a U Haul location.
- [14:44]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
That's right.
- [14:44]
Joe Schoen
But she does and she's. I guarantee you if you go there you're going to get the best service for 50 miles. And 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. 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 gonna do better. Yeah.
- [15:42]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
Love that. You graduate from Harvard, Business mba. You come work for the company. I think you told me about eight years.
- [15:51]
Joe Schoen
Yes.
- [15:51]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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 business is successful today and still serves you, still 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.
- [16:18]
Joe Schoen
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.
- [16:27]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
Yeah, that's good.
- [16:28]
Joe Schoen
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.
- [16:40]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
How did you figure out that that was something that needed to be done?
- [16:43]
Joe Schoen
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 are you here 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 sharpens 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 when you. 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 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. Otherwise, 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. Customer would come and ask for a product. I said, what are you going to do with it? They'd tell me, 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 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.
- [18:23]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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.
- [18:34]
Joe Schoen
Exactly.
- [18:35]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
So simple, yet gets overlooked a lot.
- [18:38]
Joe Schoen
Oh, it's, it's. I developed loyalty with customers because that's all they want. They want to get something done and you know you're going to have to be in the price point somewhere's reasonable. But they're not going to fight over 4 or 5%. Get them what they want, 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, I had a total different orientation than I did coming out of business school.
- [19:06]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
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- [20:19]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
I want to ask you about confidence for someone coming in. And, you know, 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?
- [20:45]
Joe Schoen
Well, of course, it's very emotional, and I came from a large family, so there's all those relationships kind of intertwined 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 U Haul and kind of scoffed at the idea you could do more. Does that make sense? Yeah.
- [21:14]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
He was like, have at it.
- [21:15]
Joe Schoen
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 reimaged all the equipment and started putting these big graphics on them, which we're now fairly well known for.
- [21:31]
Narrator
Sure.
- [21:32]
Joe Schoen
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. 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. It was going to go with the life of the corporation, not with the life of my father. Wow. And 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.
- [22:12]
Narrator
Right.
- [22:12]
Joe Schoen
Okay. What are we going to do? How are we going to do this?
- [22:15]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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?
- [22:26]
Joe Schoen
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 say, 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 need to apply it. And one of his writings says is that no advertising shall be done unless the advertising value of the equipment is maximized. Okay? So we had that situation and the equipment looked drab. And so a person on my board of directors read the same thing and he came in to me 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 sort of, if I could get this solved in 30 or 40 days, I could present and says, no, we're going to do both. And that's what we did. We just maxed out. It was just everybody, all day long, every day, one subject. How can we improve this? And at that time we did focus groups. You could 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 you all should be saying. You're American, we're Americans. Of course, we were a little nervous putting the Statue of Liberty. 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.
- [25:13]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
That's right.
- [25:13]
Joe Schoen
But as soon as we did this, it became interesting.
- [25:15]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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.
- [25:24]
Joe Schoen
Yes.
- [25:25]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
We just all identify with our place.
- [25:27]
Joe Schoen
Yes.
- [25:28]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
Whether that's a city, county, town, very
- [25:30]
Joe Schoen
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. But this is impossible. There's no way. But. But the. The idea is they actually know they're driving and they've got this information on the truck. And 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 member said, cancel your advertising. And it put me. I was just terrified because a business must advertise or go out of business. So that's kind of the story behind that.
- [26:06]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
Great lesson. I want to point out to our audience, because it's constraints that makes us most innovative. And here was another constraint.
- [26:13]
Joe Schoen
Totally. Yeah. Constraints are what gets your brain going.
- [26:17]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
Yeah.
- [26:18]
Joe Schoen
My father used to say, you never beat. Either get fat and quit or you get tired and quit.
- [26:24]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
That's good.
- [26:25]
Joe Schoen
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 as the customer. Yeah, the customer gets a better deal.
- [26:42]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
That's exactly right.
- [26:42]
Joe Schoen
And that's what business is supposed to deal. Find a better deal for the customer.
- [26:46]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
You are approaching 40 years as CEO. Been with the company much longer, but 40 years, which I don't have my data in front of me, but you gotta be one of the few that's still in that game, if not the longest. That's incredible. 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 being able to stay at the top as long as you have?
- [27:13]
Joe Schoen
So constraints is a big thing that keeps me sharp. And we have a slogan. We appropriate it 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? 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? What's the lesson that comes out of this? And when I visit a store, I try to always ask the manager, 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 does not determine competence. It's just by accident that you're in different spots. Competence is competence. And 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 co workers. They're probably going to be successful.
- [28:46]
Narrator
Yeah.
- [28:47]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
You travel famously all around the country to locations. You 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?
- [29:01]
Joe Schoen
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 Commission or 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 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. 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 got to just repeat it.
- [30:19]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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?
- [30:41]
Joe Schoen
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 consumerist 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 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, I must have gotten 100 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 everything 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 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 crank calls. 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 try it, 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 than 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. Yes, 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're getting 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, you know, some wild scheme. We've thought about it a little bit. But this, the keeping the line, chain of 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. You know, like that TV show. It's a joke. Who are you going to call? Well, you're all here. Make a decision. You know, 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, say, well, why'd you stay? The most typical answer is, I was allowed to make decisions.
- [34:34]
Narrator
Wow.
- [34:35]
Joe Schoen
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.
- [34:58]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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 because they think I have to control everything as opposed to allowing people. What you so beautifully described is that they sense freedom.
- [35:29]
Joe Schoen
Yes.
- [35:30]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
And boy, that creates that loyalty.
- [35:32]
Joe Schoen
Yes. You know, it really speaks to the soul. And that's, it'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.
- [35:43]
Narrator
Right.
- [35:44]
Joe Schoen
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
- [36:02]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
organized behavior, 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.
- [36:18]
Joe Schoen
Yes. And they now appreciate that and they think they have. They're vested in a good outcome instead of vested in a bad outcome. Or think that this is. We're going to have to have a fight. No, we don't have to fight. Explain it to me. I just don't understand. If I understood, I wouldn't oppose you.
- [36:32]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
Yeah, that's so good.
- [36:33]
Joe Schoen
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.
- [36:41]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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?
- [36:58]
Joe Schoen
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, 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 you. He said, 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 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, says, we did that, and now your rent is basically cut in half. Well, they started sending me Christmas cards, these two sisters. And then one of them died.
- [38:39]
Narrator
Okay.
- [38:39]
Joe Schoen
And she sends me a notice that her sister died. And this went 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 down 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, 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 says, 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 says, 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.
- [40:28]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Wow.
- [40:29]
Joe Schoen
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, they don't know what to do with it. But weights never go bad 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.
- [42:14]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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?
- [42:27]
Joe Schoen
Well, I think it's just 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.
- [42:44]
Narrator
Sure.
- [42:44]
Joe Schoen
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 abundance. It's just worked well. But it. I think in an odd way, it's almost being selfish.
- [43:47]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
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?
- [44:02]
Joe Schoen
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 in 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.
- [45:01]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
Yeah. Joe, what a good final word. This has been so fun. I know I'm better for it. I know our audience is as well, and we just want to thank you. Appreciate you.
- [45:08]
Joe Schoen
All right.
- [45:09]
Interviewer (Dave Ramsey)
Appreciate it.
- [45:09]
Joe Schoen
Thank you.
- [45:11]
Narrator
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 Entrez 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.