This Is Who We Are: The Guiding Principles of Meathead Movers

There are some things in business you want to move fast on. This wasn’t one of them.

I’ve spent a long time thinking about the guiding principles of Meathead Movers. I didn’t want to throw some catchy words on a wall, roll them out at a company meeting, and call them our values. I wanted to take the time necessary to get to a place where I could look at them and say: Heck yeah. This is us. This is who we are. This is what we’re all about. And this is what will carry Meathead Movers forward.

I believe we finally got there. Our four guiding principles are:

• Impeccable Character: We always do the right thing, even when it’s hard and nobody is looking.
• Courageous Candor: We state the facts, tell the truth, and speak with kindness.
• Building Leaders: We develop ourselves and others through feedback, accountability, and example.
• Competitive Greatness: We’re disciplined in how we pursue excellence, bring good energy, and continuously raise our standards to be the best.

Culture in action: CEO Aaron Steed walks 40 team members through the Guiding Principles that define who we are

More Than a Mission Statement

I think it’s important to distinguish what these guiding principles are and what they aren’t. They aren’t our company mission statement. Our mission helps guide where we’re going as a business and the decisions we make in the boardroom. They also aren’t our service pillars. Those define the standards we uphold when we’re serving our clients and delivering the Meathead experience.

Our guiding principles are different. They’re our code for how Team Meathead conducts ourselves. They’re how we treat each other. How we communicate. How we lead. How we respond when something goes wrong. How we handle difficult conversations. How we compete. And perhaps most importantly, they’re the standard we hold ourselves to when nobody else is watching.

These principles define the kind of people and leaders we aspire to be.

Impeccable Character

We always do the right thing, even when it’s hard and nobody is looking.

Character is easy when doing the right thing is convenient. The real test comes when doing the right thing costs you something. When nobody would know. When admitting a mistake is uncomfortable. When taking responsibility would be easier to avoid. That’s when character matters most.

We’ve built Meathead Movers over nearly three decades, and I’ve learned that there is no shortcut around integrity. Trust takes years to build and moments to lose. I want Meatheads to be known as people whose word means something. We do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.

Courageous Candor

We state the facts, tell the truth, and speak with kindness.

Great teams cannot operate without truth. Sometimes that means having uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes it means telling someone something they don’t necessarily want to hear. Sometimes it means acknowledging that something isn’t working. But candor without kindness can become cruelty, and kindness without candor can become avoidance. We need both.

Courageous candor means respecting someone enough to tell them the truth and respecting them enough to deliver that truth with kindness. That’s how trust gets built. That’s how problems get solved. And that’s how people get better.

Building Leaders

We develop ourselves and others through feedback, accountability, and example.

I’ve always believed Meathead Movers should be more than a place where somebody gets a paycheck. It should be a place where people grow.

Leadership isn’t determined by the title on someone’s business card. Leadership happens every day in how we communicate, how we handle adversity, how we take responsibility, and how we influence the people around us.

Building leaders means constantly working on ourselves while also helping the people around us improve. It means giving feedback. It means accepting feedback. It means holding each other accountable. And most importantly, it means leading by example. We don’t simply tell people what the standard is. We show them.

Competitive Greatness

We’re disciplined in how we pursue excellence, bring good energy, and continuously raise our standards to be the best.

There’s a reason Meathead Movers was built around athletes. Athletes understand that greatness isn’t something you declare. It’s something you earn. It’s earned through preparation, discipline, repetition, effort, attitude, and the willingness to keep improving.

Competitive greatness isn’t about beating the person sitting next to you. It’s about refusing to become complacent. It’s asking: How can we do this better? It’s bringing energy when things are difficult. It’s maintaining discipline when nobody is pushing you. And it’s continually raising the standard, not because someone told you to, but because being the best requires it.

Now Comes the Hard Part

Writing these principles down was important. But it’s also the easy part.

The ultimate test is what happens next. Do we actually live them? Do they show up in our meetings? In our branches? On our moving trucks? In difficult conversations? In the decisions we make when there isn’t an obvious answer? Do we hold each other accountable to them? And perhaps most importantly for me personally: do I embody them?

As CEO, I don’t get to simply introduce these principles and then ask everyone else to follow them. I have to go first. If I expect courageous candor, I need to invite people to be candid with me. If I expect impeccable character, my decisions need to demonstrate it. If we’re going to build leaders, I need to continue developing the people around me and continue developing myself. And if we’re pursuing competitive greatness, I can’t ever become satisfied with where we are today.

None of us will live these principles perfectly every day. That’s not the expectation. The expectation is that they’re the standard we keep coming back to. Because culture isn’t what you print on a poster. Culture is what you repeatedly do.

After nearly 30 years of building Meathead Movers, I’m incredibly excited about where we’re headed. As we grow, develop new leaders, and give more people opportunities to take ownership and build careers here, it becomes even more important that we’re crystal clear about what remains constant. These principles are that foundation.

They’re clear. They’re powerful. And now they’re defined.

This is who we are. This is what we stand for. And this is how we’ll carry Meathead Movers forward.