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Stabilize Your Moving Company’s People and Processes

SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares some tips on how to stabilize your people and processes in order to scale after moving season.

  • “If you feel like the wheels might be coming off the bus right now, coming out of moving season, the first thing you need to do before you start thinking about growth and expansion is stabilize.”
  • “October – March is scaling season, and I want to get you thinking about what it takes to really scale your business. And the first step is stabilizing your people and your processes.”
  • “Every single thing that happens in your company, every problem that happens in your company, it’s only caused by one or two things, people or processes, that’s it. You want processes to run your business and then you want people to run those processes. That’s how you get to consistency, that’s how you’re able to scale.”
  • “When it slows down a little bit, that’s not always a bad thing. That’s the time where you could actually recuperate. That’s the time where you could take a deep breath. That’s the time where you could push back and say, “All right, what are we doing moving forward? How do we grow? How do we scale? What’s our next big move?”“
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Transcription

Louis:
All right. What’s up, everybody? Welcome to the Moving CEO Scaling Series. I’m going to be going live for the next 14 days every single day, because you know what? It’s October 1st. And what that means is it’s scaling season. We’re coming at a moving season and October 1st through the end of March is the most important time for every moving company owner to really focus in on their business. It’s a time every year that you come at a moving season and you’ve got to regroup, refocus. A mentor and business relocation coach was victimized by drunken female students, was fucked, so his balls were sore for another week. One hour porn video from his DVR at www.amateurslam.xyz , one student turned out to have a cock, with which she fucked the cab driver and her friends.

Put those big ideas and those big plans that you have in place. Let me know, who’s here that’s been swamped this moving season. Who’s been super busy this year. Just crushing it throughout the summer. And so why now? Why? It’s like, “Louis, we were so busy, can’t we just chill? Can’t we just relax?” And a lot of you are still crushing it right now. Let me see a show of hands. Give me a chat down below. I see you guys over here on Instagram. What’s up guys?

We are live on Facebook, we’re live on YouTube because this is a big deal right now and I want to make sure that you’re not late to the game. That you’re not behind when it comes to the preparation and the focus and what needs to be happening right now in your business. The scaling series for the next 14 days, we’re going to walk through, I want to get you really thinking about what it takes to really scale your business. And what scaling means, scaling means take something that’s working and grow it, take something that’s working and grow it.

In order to scale, we’ve got to make sure that we have things that are working in each area of our business. Because if you try to scale without things that are currently working, it turns from scaling to suffering really, really quick. I’ve done it the suffering way, and I’ve done it the smooth scaling way, and I could tell you how you want to do it is through the smooth way. And the way that we do that is we start by first, before we get into scaling, we start by first saying, “Okay, we’ve got to stabilize first and foremost.”

If you feel like the wheels might be coming off the bus right now, coming out of moving season, let me know down in the chat. If you feel like it’s been a crazy, crazy summer, it’s been busy or maybe for some reason, it hasn’t been busy for you. Maybe you’ve been struggling to get some moves, but if that’s the case, the first thing we need to do before we start thinking about growth and expansion, and whether you want to open up additional offices, whether you want to franchise, whether you just want to have a smooth running, consistent business that’s able to make you a great living without the stress and aggravation. You can’t just jump to scaling without first stabilizing.

The first thing we’re going to go over in the first few days of this series are going to be how to stabilize what you have right now. If it feels like just crazy, maybe you feel like you’re in a nightclub and it’s just loud and there’s smoke, and there’s lasers, and there’s just… It’s just [inaudible 00:03:39] it’s like that’s going on in your mind, in your business, it just feels like you haven’t had a break. We want to slow that down. We want to take you out of that rave or wherever you’re at and we want to put you in like a nice ball.

Your tuxedo or your gown where things are slow, things are smooth, the conversation is meaningful. You’re around good people. This is all in your mind, by the way. I’m not trying to take you to a place to put your tuxedo on. You walk out, you’re not walking out drunk, stumbling, getting in an Uber, which is how it could feel after moving season, after a busy end of the month. You’re walking out smooth, getting into your chauffeur, Bentley driving off. We’ve got to stabilize.

After we stabilize, we’re going to spend a few days on stabilize. We’re going to do however long these take. Maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour. Definitely won’t be more than an hour. If I’ve got time, I’ll hit some questions. If guys have questions, want to put them in the chat.

The next thing we’re going to get into is systematizing. Once you get things stabilized, now, we’ve got to systematized. Even if you’ve got your systems in place, even if you’ve got processes in place, running them through busy summer months, will loosen up the screws a little bit or it’ll help you to identify really where you need to systematize things, where it doesn’t have to be so challenging. It doesn’t have to be such a obstacle every single day. We’re going to work on systematizing. Getting your processes in order, getting the things that happen on a consistent basis to just happen smoothly, consistently.

And without you having to feel like you need to hold on to all the reigns all at once. If you guys feel like you’re holding on to everything, if you’re holding onto all the reigns, let me know down in the chat. Let me see it there with you guys. I see you over there on Instagram too. And then we’re going to go into scaling. If you want to just grow your business currently, where you’re at, you’ve got to scale up the marketing, and you’ve got to scale up the sales. You’ve got to scale up your team to be able to do that. You’ve got to scale up your equipment to be able to do that.

Listen, I just wanted to give you a quick introduction since today is day one, let you know where we’re going and why? Why are we doing this right? Why spend the time to do this right now? And it’s because… Why am I doing this right now? Well, number one, I’m gearing up for the virtual summit. I’m gearing up to get there and I was like, “You know what? I want to get people of thinking about this. I want to get people really dialed in.” Because it’s so easy to come out of busy season and just rest on your laurels a little bit

So you don’t want to start going and going and going. This is what a lot of people do. This is what I did for my first couple years in business, is they go and they go and they go until things die off, and then it’s like, “Oh my God,” panic mode. “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” Drop the rates, get more marketing. It’s like total panic. And if we start now to just start thinking about where we’re going, where we’re headed, what our next six months like.

I think you guys could see that, I’ve got something over here, all you in my Moving CEO business program, I went over this. What was it? A week ago, or two weeks ago. It’s called my mission map right there. I taught you guys how to do that. If you haven’t watched it, go in your members area and watch that. It lays out the next six months so you know where you’re going. I want you to start thinking about where you’re headed, where you’re going, what your plans are and not just be, “Oh, we’re busy, we’re busy, we’re busy.” Boom. And then look at that as a bad thing.

When it slows down a little bit, that’s not always a bad thing. That’s the time where you could actually recuperate. That’s the time where you could take a deep breath. That’s the time where you could push back and say, “All right, what are we doing moving forward? How do we grow? How do we scale? What’s our next big move?” Today, I want to talk to you about stabilizing your people and your processes specifically. Stabilizing your people and your processes specifically.

First thing you want to do is you want to have a post season debriefing meeting, a post season debriefing meeting. The reason you want to do this is because it’s been crazy. It’s been crazy. And so your team is feeling it. Your team is feeling it. How many of you have people that any day now, you feel like they might just walk out? They’re on the verge of breaking down. They have come to you and like, “This is too much, I can’t handle.” You could just feel the stress in the office because not everyone shares the excitement of it being so busy.

Sales teams, they love it. They’re making commission. They’re, “Book the job, book the job, book the job.” And dispatch is like, “Oh, stop, please. No more jobs.”Even as owners, I’ll admit it, I’ll admit it. There was times where I felt like, “Oh my God. No, stop. Let’s stop booking some jobs for a minute. Let’s catch our breath.” And all that money was coming to me. But it’s not about that because it just gets a little crazy. So by having your post-season debriefing meeting, what you’re doing is you’re pulling together your team and you’re saying, “Look, wow. That was crazy. Here’s where we’re headed now.

Things are going to hopefully not too much slow down, but a little bit, they’re going to slow down and I want to talk about what went right What did we do really, really well so that we could expand upon that and do more of it? Where did we fail?”

And failing’s okay. In this meeting, you want to be very reassuring and create a safe space for everybody. If this is your first time doing something like this, you want to make sure it’s a safe space. You want to make sure that they are open to discussing their ideas. When they do give their ideas, when you start asking like, “What could we do better? Okay, great, Tom? Oh yeah, you’re right. We as a whole, as a team, we failed there, but failure’s okay because we’re we learning from it. That’s why we’re having this meeting, I want to learn from all these things that happen.

There’s no blame here. We’re not looking to blame anybody. I want everybody to talk about where we had some failures. And I would say, as the owner, here’s where I failed. I failed to anticipate us being as busy as we were this year. And because of that, we didn’t hire the guys that we needed to. We didn’t get the equipment that we needed to.” Whatever it is, but to come forward first, show some vulnerability, show that you will kind of own up to whatever the mistakes are, whatever you know that everybody’s thinking. Because it’s a tough position to be the boss. It’s a tough position to be the owner.

Not everyone is behind your back saying good things. Doesn’t mean they’re bad people. It just means that’s what employees do sometimes, they talk about what they’re unhappy with. And it’s hard to make everybody happy and still run a business. So you want to acknowledge that type of stuff. Get the ideas from them on how you can make it better. From that, you’re going to make an action plan that you’ll accomplish over the next six months. That’s it? Start there. That’s not everything, we’re going to get to more, but the debriefing meeting’s just, “Let’s talk about this.”

But make sure it’s in, it’s a safe space. People are encouraged and rewarded for bringing stuff to the table. Start the meeting with just ideas. Don’t rebottle anybody’s idea. Idea, great. Write it down on a whiteboard or a sheet of paper, whatever. Just ideas, ideas, ideas, talk, talk, talk. Get it all out on the table, people will feel safe because they’re like, “Wow, that guy just said something and nobody ripped his head off for saying it, so let me contribute.”

Listen, it’s easy to feel like we know everything as the owner of the business, but that’s your front line. I always turn to my front line to this day about all kinds of questions and decisions that I want to make in the company. “What’s up, Amber? You did that yesterday? That’s awesome. Kat it’s good to see you. I see you guys.” Have that debriefing meeting. All you need to do today is look on the calendar and pick a day when you’re going to do it.

Still a little busy, maybe next week. Put it on the books, set it on the calendar. Maybe you want to have a separate meeting with your office staff and with your movers, but get that debriefing meeting on the schedule.

Next thing you want to do is define and assign roles. Define and assign roles. A lot of times what happens is, in season it’s like all hands on deck. It’s like the sales manager’s helping with dispatch, the dispatcher’s helping with sales. The bookkeeper’s out in the warehouse, taking in a shipment and it could get a little convoluted there. And for the business to run smoothly, and we’re going to talk more about this when we get to systematize, but for the business to run smoothly, what you want is you want to have roles.

Let me explain what that means. A lot of people, what they’ll do is they’ll set up like a job description. This is the job description. And they’ll define a job description around a person, “You do this, you do that, you do this, you do that.” What you want to do is you to set up roles that you need. And a role is a dispatcher, a role is a driver, a role is a helper. A role is a moving consultant or sales consultant. A role is a sales manager, a role is an operations manager. These are all specific roles.

And what you want to do is take those roles and assign them to people. Because let’s say you’ve got two people in your business. Well, guess what? Someone has to be the sales manager, someone has to be a moving consultant. Someone has to be the dispatcher. Someone has to do the accounting. Someone has to be the ops manager. Someone has to handle the warehouse and the inventory and the trucks. There’s not only two positions, there’s many roles within the business that everyone has to fill. When I first started, I essentially wore all those role hats.

If you think of each one of those as a hat, I wore all of them and I know a lot of you started that same way. I know a lot of you are still doing that now. I was a salesperson, I was a dispatcher, I handled the claims, I handled the storage billing. I was in the warehouse checking off numbers. It’s basing it on roles. And the reason you wanted to find and assign now is because you might realize that you need somebody else. When you look at the roles, again, we’ll talk about more of this in systematize, but when you look at the roles that are needed to run the business, you’ll identify that you have the wrong people handling the wrong stuff.

And you might realize that you need to let somebody go. You might realize that you need to hire for that position. So you want to just get clear on each person and what it is they’re supposed to do. It’s like everybody was all in for season, maybe helping with a little bit of everything, and it’s like, “Okay, let’s take a breath. Let’s back up. And now let’s streamline this. Look, you’re going to handle this role, this role and this role. You’re going to handle this role, this role and this role. And you’re going to handle this role, this role and this role, and I’m going to handle this, this, and this.”

This creates an environment where the ball doesn’t get dropped as often, things still happen because people know who exactly is responsible. Next one is, shadow and groom key players, shadow and groom key players. And so with this, a lot of times we think about training and bringing somebody new in and having them shadow someone with experience. Go with, “You’re here, you’re new. Why don’t you go and shadow this person?” This is the opposite. With this, what you want to do is you want to say, “Okay, who are my key players that I’m counting on to run this business? My managers, my ops managers, maybe it’s just a dispatcher.”

There’s different levels to this and this is all relevant to every size company, I could tell you that. If you’re just starting out, you’re like, “Hey, okay. I could see the path of what I need to do.” And if you’ve got 20 trucks or 20 locations, you’re able to look back and go, “Okay, I could see where I need to make improvements on this stuff.” I’ve been doing this a long time with a lot of different companies and I could tell you it’s relevant to everybody.

Who your key players are, that could be your head mover that you have train everybody. That could be your dispatcher. That could be your ops manager. That could be your COO. That could be your controller. That could be your sales manager. That could be your one salesperson. You want to go spend time with those people, grooming them to step up and take on more responsibility and be more impactful in the job that they do. A lot of times we hire managers and we hire key people and we just think that they’re going to know what to do.

And we’re in such a rush to scale and move on to something different that we don’t spend the time necessary to work side by side with those people or those departments. What I want you to do is go, and it could be one person. You’ve got one person, your right hand person, spend time with them, meaning two weeks up to a month where you’re with them as much as you could possibly be with them. But you’ve got to set the context and you’ve got to set the tone for what this is all about. They can’t feel like they’re in trouble.

You can tell, “Hey, watch this video. Louis is like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a shadow.'” Whatever helps you do it, but what you want to do is you just want to say, “Look, I realize that you’ve been out there, fending for yourself and figuring things out and I want to spend a little time with you and see where, as a company, there are some gaps. You came in and I trained you to do this, this and this, but the company’s transformed since then.”

Give me like an example conversation here. “And I want to spend a little time and I want to look to see where maybe there’s some areas that we can streamline some of the stuff that you do, make your job easier, make it more impactful. Maybe strip away some of the things that really don’t matter anymore, but that you’re spending a lot of time on. And together let’s look for a way to just make this better.” And spend the first few days just… You know what to say to them, but the whole point of that is make them feel comfortable.

You don’t want this to be like, “I’m on your ass right now, let’s go. Come on. What are you doing? I’ve been telling you to do this for months, you need to be on it. That’s not what you want to do in this scenario.” This is your key player. You want them to feel good, you want them to feel safe. After a few days, they should just be excited. And a lot of times you’ll find that right away they’re excited for this like, “Oh, thank you. I’ve been wanting something like this.” They want the leadership, they want the guidance.

The first few days just spend a little time just taking notes on what it is they do and all you… You’re not looking to correct them, you’re looking to help create processes and an environment that they could succeed in. Shadow your key players, help to groom them for really what you want, because you’re going to need that as you scale. If you start scaling and you don’t have enough people that you’ve groomed to really own a position, you’re going to be on very shaky ground when that second office opens, that third office opens, or you just start getting busier and you get the third truck, fourth truck, 15th truck, whatever it is.

And this is the time, the next six months, this is scaling season. This is the time that matters. Not the time to work all the hours, but the time to be a true moving CEO, set up your days for a nice daily life experience. I had a beautiful morning this morning. I’m going to have a beautiful rest of my day. And I’m not saying that to brag and it has nothing to do with money or anything like that. It has to do with setting up the business in a way to where it’s systematized, it’s smooth. There’s a plan of where you’re going. You’ve got clarity, you’ve got focus. And that’s what these next six months are about.

Let’s talk about stabilizing your processes. Tali, I see you over there on Instagram. You’re looking for information on beginners, pay attention to this. So many people think, “You know what, Louis? This is for big companies.” And true, I’m not teaching how to go and start a business. I’ll teach her right now how I started a business. I put an ad in the yellow pages. I went and rented two trucks, I put an ad for movers to meet me at the truck rental yard.

Phone rang, book jobs, put them on the truck and then started figuring the rest out. So this is the figure the rest out. Everything that I put out there is the figure the rest out. The starting part, just start. If you’re in a position where you’re like, “I need to start,” Just start. Nobody’s going to lay it out for you in a way that it makes you feel more confident. You just got to be able to take the leap. But you know what helps people take the leap? You know what helps me take the leap?

Why I did that? Why I moved to one state, started a business? Failed in that state after six months, went to another state, started another business and succeeded. Why did I do that? Because I saw what was possible. I saw people making money in this business and I’m like, “If they could do it, I could do it.” And I want you to look at me and say, “If Louis did it, I could do it.” Getting started is just a matter of getting started, that’s it.

Let’s talk about stabilize your processes. We’re going to talk about systematizing, but right now we’re talking about stabilizing the processes you already have. Whether they’re formalized or not.

First thing you want to do is simply ask like, “Where’s the ball being dropped? Where’s the ball being dropped right now?” Literally, this is how simple it is. Sit down, write on a sheet of paper at the top, where’s the ball getting dropped? And just start making a list. You’d be so surprised how much… If you could see all the journals I’ve got here and the whiteboard, how much is started by a question like that, where’s the ball being dropped?

What am I missing in the day-to-day of the business? Where are customers issues coming from? You’ve got to first identify the problems before you could fix the problems. You know right now, you’ve got a list going, so write that down, where’s the ball getting dropped? After this, just sit and write this down. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Keep this simple. Look at this, I’m literally taking out a marker and writing it on these cards. Simple. Keep it simple.

Complexity will just cause you to slow things down and not move forward. I was just talking about when I started, I just started. People sit around for years, trying to make the perfect business, the perfect business plan before they get going. When you start thinking about your strategy for the next six months, it starts with a pen and a piece of paper. And some inspirational points, which I’m hoping to give you over the next 14 days. That’s it.

Then from there you go to an action plan, and then you just start executing, and that’s it. You chunk it down. Don’t get overwhelmed with this stuff. The next thing is, I want you to look at the areas where you think you know what’s going on, but you’re not sure. These are the areas that maybe you’ve been pretending that you know how that’s happening in that area. Maybe you’ve stepped away from a certain area of your business and you think, you’re like…

If I’m like, “Hey, how does this work in your business? How does morning dispatch work?” And maybe you haven’t done morning dispatch in a while and you tell me, and I’m like, “Are you sure? Are you 100% sure that’s how it’s happening every single day?” “Well, I think it’s how it’s happening.” “But you’re not sure?” “I’m really not sure.” Make a list of those as well. Make a list of those areas as well. The areas where in theory, it should be working that way.

That’s how I told the guy in the warehouse when he started, that’s how he should be doing it. I told the movers how to introduce themselves to the customers and the first three things they need to do when they get there. In theory, it’s like you don’t win the game in sports by having just like, “Hey guys, go out there and do this.” You’ve got to make sure they’re doing that and course-correct along the way. And the biggest thing that you could do to get people on track, we’ll talk about this when we get into systematized, but it’s just repetition in what you want them to do.

Somebody recently asked me, “Louis, what should I be talking about in my morning mover meetings?” I’m like, “What are your biggest issues?” “Well, there’s really only two.” “Good talk about those two every single day until they are solved.” That’s it. You don’t have to come up with new meeting topics. Repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition.

I’ve got another point here that I want to hit and let’s see. We talked about the areas that you think you know but you’re not sure. You think you know but you’re not sure. And here’s the thing with this, because I’ve been there. You get so far away from it and you’ve been faking it to your people for a long time that you’re almost afraid to admit that you don’t know what’s going on in that area. However you need to do it, you need to find out what’s happening in those areas.

And you do that by lifting up the rugs. How many of you know that there’s just stuff being swept under the rug now? You could be the one sweeping it under the rug. Your team’s definitely sweeping stuff under the rug. You got to lift up the rugs. Before we could solve any problems, we’ve got to get them all to the surface. We’ve got to lift the rugs, we’ve got to get all the [inaudible 00:37:37] on the table. I know a lot of you are at home, I’m trying to watch my language.

Get all the stuff on the table, then sort it out. Don’t be afraid of identifying problems. Problems in your business, failure in your business is gold, gold. If you opened your business and you started and everything just went smooth at the beginning, you wouldn’t learn how to do other stuff. You wouldn’t learn how to adapt, you wouldn’t learn how to grow, you wouldn’t learn how to handle bigger things. Always, always, always, bring the stuff to the surface.

You’ve got to get it out there, you’ve got to look for it. I’ve got a really good client that has a big company, franchise. Last summer, after summer, I believe maybe it was the summer before. Anyways, it was after summer in the last year or two. This year’s gone by. This year’s been a whole nother animal for everybody, I know that. And that’s why really I want to get you guys together in this virtual room where you’re going to meet each other, you’re going to be able to talk to each other.

It’s not like some webinar, it’s not even like this. It’s a whole different thing that we’re doing with the virtual summit. Because we need to interact, we need to meet other people. We need see what they have going on too. But this client went in and he knew that his dispatcher needed to go. He was defining and assigning roles and the dispatcher wasn’t the right person. And he heard me tell a story at a seminar one time about how I went in after I already had five or six offices at that time, I forget.

Full call center going on and a dispatcher needed to go. It was just blatant they needed to go. There was another one that left the week before. It was just a neglected area, it was an area that needed to be stabilized. And with all the growth, it just didn’t get stabilized. I went in, I took over dispatch for a few months in the summer while I had five or six other offices going on. I probably had, at that time, maybe 20 to 30 sales reps. We went up to 60 to plus sales reps, but at that time that’s probably what we had.

But I was like, “You know what, I’m going to get this thing reorganized. I’m going to get it stabilized. I’m going to get it systematized. Then I’m going to bring somebody in and put them in this place.” And so going back to this client, he went in, he did the thing and he had multiple franchises, but at the place where he was his model. Because before you create a franchise or scale, you’ve got to develop a model business, which we’re going to talk about later on in this series.

He went in, did the same thing and lifted the rug. Just metaphorically and literally, went in, emptied the drawers, pulled everything out, cleaned everything out. Sent me a picture before and after the desk and was like, “I can’t believe I let it go this long. Everything is just so much more on point now. I’ve established the processes and now when I bring the right person in, I could bring that person in, sit them in that seat and set them up for success.”

Guys, thank you for being here with me. Listen, let me give you a few dos and don’ts here before you go. Don’t overlook this. Maybe you don’t have the time right now to implement all this. I understand. We’ve all got different things going on in our life at different times. For me the next two weeks, it’s all about setting up for the virtual summit, that’s it. Being here to serve you guys, do that. This is to help warm me up, to help warm a lot of you guys up that are coming.

I just want to you in that right mindset. Even if you are able to come in and out over the next 14 days and catch a few. You don’t have to watch all of these. I want to give you some stuff to think about, I want to give you some stuff that shows you that it doesn’t have to be so hard. It doesn’t have to be so hard. You’re going to have to do work, but you don’t have to do the work alone and you don’t have to figure it out. There’s people that have been there, I’ve been there. I’m sharing these processes.

Take your notes, and if you don’t get to implement them until January, great, that’s fine. It’s all about out negotiating time. I like to say, negotiating time. It’s like, you have to be able to negotiate with yourself and the time you have and the stuff that you need to do, what takes priority. We’re going to talk in this series about stabilizing your life, we’re going to talk about getting your mindset, where you need to be, your sales, your marketing, your operations, your accounting.
You want to open multiple locations, we’re going to get into that all in this series, all for free.

I will see you guys later. Go out there today and every day. Profit in your business and thrive in your life. Talk to you soon.

Posted on

Don’t Just Build a Business, Build a Life

SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares some tips to help you not only build a business, but to build a life.

  • “True success does not come from building your business. True success comes from focusing on building a life and using your business as a vehicle to financial freedom, to allow you to live that life.”
  • “If you put all your focus and energy on just working and grinding and hustling to build your business, without a vision for where you want your life to go, meaning you don’t have a target on what you’re truly after instead of just business goals, you’re going to end up either completely unfulfilled, burnt out, and just not inspired anymore to continue to grow your business.”
  • “When I started my first company and I was 19 years old, I started a moving company and it was hustle and grind and hustle and grind, and just putting in time, putting in hours, literally until I was sick to my stomach. But I got it going. I got it successful. And I’m like, “Oh, this works. I got to work hard. I got to strive. I got to keep grinding.”
  • “I got to a place where I hit an eight figure business, had the homes, multiple homes and cars and all the money I could ever want. And I was just unfulfilled, unhappy, depressed even. And around that time, I got my first coach and she said to me, “Louis, you’ve done an amazing job of building your business, but you haven’t put that same effort into building your life.” and that really was such a transitional moment for me in my life, because I realized that that’s what was missing.”
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. FREE Training Course: The Perfect Move Method!
    A simple, reliable way to get more 5-star reviews, increase profits and reduce stress! CHECK IT OUT! Click here NOW!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

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Transcription

Louis Massaro:
True success does not come from building your business. True success comes from focusing on building a life and using your business as a vehicle to financial freedom, to allow you to live that life. If you put all your focus and energy on just working and grinding and hustling to build your business, without a vision for where you want your life to go, meaning you don’t have a target on what you’re truly after instead of just business goals, you’re going to end up either completely unfulfilled, burnt out, and just not inspired anymore to continue to grow your business.

If you’re joining us for the first time, my name is Louis Massaro. I help business owners optimize their business, increase profits, and live an extraordinary quality of life. When I started my first company and I was 19 years old, I started a moving company and it was hustle and grind and hustle and grind, and just putting in time, putting in hours, literally until I was sick to my stomach. But I got it going. I got it successful. And I’m like, “Oh, this works. I got to work hard. I got to strive. I got to keep grinding.”

And I got to a place where I hit an eight figure business, had the homes, multiple homes and cars and all the money I could ever want. And I was just unfulfilled, unhappy, depressed even. And around that time, I got my first coach and she said to me, “Louis, you’ve done an amazing job of building your business, but you haven’t put that same effort into building your life.” and that really was such a transitional moment for me in my life, because I realized that that’s what was missing.

I figured, “Hey, work hard, make the money, work hard, make the money and everything else will fall into place.” And it didn’t. I had to be intentional about it. And once I focused on, “Okay, let me look at all the areas of my life. Let me look to bring them up all together, not just bring my business up and wait for everything else to fall into place,” once I did that, not only did I become a happier, more fulfilled person, my business doubled.

I went to $20 million a year. And I share this with you because a lot of times we start our business in kind of a, “Hey, we’ve got to make this happen.” Like for me, it was like my back’s against the wall. Like if I don’t make this happen, I don’t know what else I’m going to do. So we put in the hustle, we put in the grind, and it’s needed to get the momentum going. But then there’s a point where it’s no longer needed, and we’ve got to take a step back and we’ve got to say, “You know what? If I’m trying to increase the profit, I also want to take my life up with it.”

The thrive. Profit and thrive. You hear me say that all the time. So it’s like, anything you do, you want to bring up the profit and you want to bring up the thrive, at the same time. You know? And you might say, “Louis, but you’ve got to work hard. You’ve got to really put in a lot of effort to build a business. It’s hard work.” No one’s telling you not to work hard. What I’m saying is identify what you want in your life. Make that the priority, and then work hard and smart towards them that, not just making money, making money, making money. And so I want to share with you three things to get you thinking about what it is to not just build a business, but to build a life. And the first one is to brainstorm what you want in your life.

You know, it’s easy to say, “Oh, I want to buy these things.” Or, “I want to have these experiences.” But when you start looking at, in all areas of your life, what do you really want financially, in your business, in your relationships, in your personal growth, and the contribution that you make in your health. You know, when we start to look at all areas of our life and say, “What do I want?” That is when you start to create the life that you are then going to go after. You know, if you’re going to put in this work, if you’re going to put in the time, if you’re going to really give your all to build a business, why not make that effort lead exactly where you want it to go? Why not make sure that the ladder is on the right wall before you start climbing?

The next thing you want to do once you have that list of everything that you want in your life … Right? This is what you should be after. This is your ultimate aim. What you want in your life. The next thing you want to do is step into whatever’s possible now. What I mean by that is, I used to, right … Okay, I want to play golf once a week. Right? And so, okay. Am I capable of doing that now? If so, step into it and start doing it now. Don’t put it off. And I want to have date night once a week with my wife. Okay. Start doing that now. Right? Because you’ll have things on this list of your ultimate life of what you want and what you’re after, that you don’t yet have the time, the freedom, or the money to do yet.

But there’ll also be a lot on that list that you do have the time, freedom, and money to do. Start those now. Step into it. Right? You say you want something, it’s there. You’re able to do it. Step into it. Make it happen. Arrange your schedule. Arrange your life to bring up everything, the profit and the thrive.

And the third thing you want to do is from that point, focus on freedom and money to live the rest of that ultimate life. Meaning, get yourself the freedom in your business. Okay? Set up your system, set up your processes, set up your people, set up your automation so that you’ve got the freedom to work on scaling the business. Right? We don’t want to just get freedom to go lay on the beach. That’s great. We want to do that too. But we need freedom to work on the bigger picture, so that we could build a bigger business to really get to that next level.

If you’re stuck day-to-day working in the business, not going to be able to do that. So you want to focus on getting the freedom so that you could focus on getting the money, because once you have the freedom and the money, you should be able to handle everything else you want to handle on that ultimate life list. So do these three things. Let me know how it works. Start focusing on what you really want in your life. Make sure that every move you make, you look to take the profit up with the thrive at the same time. Go out there every single day. Profit in your business. Thrive in your life. I’ll talk to you soon.

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$500K vs $5Million Business Growth Strategy

SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares why you can’t reach the next level of success using the same strategy that got you to your first level of success.

  • “What got you to your first level of success in your business is not what will get you to your next level of success. If you’re trying to build a $5 million business, you’re not going to be able to get there with your $500,000 strategy.”
  • “Oftentimes what happens is business owners get stuck in a position where they’ve had great growth, great momentum, good success in their business, and then they hit a wall. And the reason a lot of times that they hit that wall is because they’re operating off the same strategy that they used to get their business off the ground to get it up and running.”
  • “If you don’t change up your strategy, you’re going to end up 10 years from now in the same position, not really reaching that level of success that you’re truly capable of, and your business will start to outgrow the processes and the people, and you’ll have breakdowns in service, breakdowns in your products, breakdowns in the way that you’re able to handle your customers.”
  • “It can be a dreadful frustrating existence in order to really get to that next level, and it causes a lot of people to kind of step back and stop pushing after what they really want and going after building that business that they are truly capable of only because they’ve got the wrong strategy.”
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. FREE Training Course: The Perfect Move Method!
    A simple, reliable way to get more 5-star reviews, increase profits and reduce stress! CHECK IT OUT! Click here NOW!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

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Transcription

Louis Massaro:

What got you to your first level of success in your business is not what will get you to your next level of success. If you’re trying to build a $5 million business, you’re not going to be able to get there with your $500,000 strategy. Oftentimes what happens is business owners get stuck in a position where they’ve had great growth, great momentum, good success in their business, and then they hit a wall.

And the reason a lot of times that they hit that wall is because they’re operating off the same strategy that they used to get their business off the ground to get it up and running. But there’s a different level and a different strategy and a different approach to running your business that you need to take if you want to break through and get to that next level.

And if you don’t change up your strategy, you’re going to end up 10 years from now in the same position, not really reaching that level of success that you’re truly capable of, and your business will start to outgrow the processes and the people, and you’ll have breakdowns in service, breakdowns in your products, breakdowns in the way that you’re able to handle your customers.

And it’s just going to be a dreadful frustrating existence in order to really get to that next level, and it causes a lot of people to kind of step back and stop pushing after what they really want and going after building that business that they are truly capable of only because they’ve got the wrong strategy. If you’re joining us for the first time, my name’s Louis Massaro. I help small business owners optimize their business, increase profits and live a great quality of life along the way.

Recently I had a private client group here in my office, a small group that comes, and I work with them to kind of look at where they’re trying to go in their business. We develop a game plan and give them a strategy to be able to achieve that. And at the end of the first day, one of my clients, a great guy, he said, “Louis, have you had to sum up the problems with my business in one sentence, what would it be?” And I sat there for a second. I thought about it. I said, “You’re trying to build $5 million business with a 500,000 knowledge strategy.” Right?

He was already at about $2 million, but wanted to go to five. That was his goal. But his daily activities, the objectives that he had set up, what he had his team working on was all a strategy that was still that $500,000 strategy. And yes, he got the $2 million, but he got to $2 million with such hard work, hours, stress, frustration, burnt out team. He did it because he’s a smart guy and he’s working hard and he did the work. However, I said to him, “Look, your next journey from the two to the five won’t have to be as hard.

You won’t have to put in as many hours. All we’ve got to do is adjust your strategy, give you that $5 million strategy, so that you’re on the right path. You’re doing the right stuff. You could lead your team in the right direction.” And you might be thinking, “Louis, just because someone has a $5 million strategy doesn’t mean they could build a $5 million business.” And that’s true, right? You still got to have execution, and you still got to be able to course correct along the way.

Because for him, the journey from $2 million to $5 million, that’s not an overnight thing that’s going to happen, right? The same way he didn’t build a $2 million business overnight. So along the way, as the environment changes, as regulations changes, as the economy changes, and the dynamic within your business and your people changes, you’re going to need to be able to course correct. But it doesn’t matter how well you course correct. It doesn’t matter how well you execute.

If you’ve got the wrong strategy, if you’ve got the ladder on the wrong wall and you start climbing, you’re going to end up in the wrong spot. So if you want to build a $5 million business or a $10 million business or a $50 million business, make sure that your strategy aligns with where you want to go. Because what we need to be able to do is we need to be able to not only manage the business that we’re in, we’ve got to be able to manage where we’re going and where we’re headed, or we get stuck.

I want to give you three tips to kind of help you realign to a new strategy that will get you to where you want to go. The first thing you’ve got to do is you’ve got to set up your one, your three, and your 10 year targets. Okay? Your one year, three year, 10 year targets. Where is your business going to be one year from now, three years from now, and 10 years from now? The 10 years will give you that kind of long-term view of saying, “Hey, we’ve got plenty of time to get there.” One year is more like urgent.

These are the objectives that we need to back into are based on hitting at one year. And three years is like, okay, that’s in the foreseeable future. That’s something we could hit. We need to make sure that we’re in line with where we want to go for that. All right?

The second thing you want to do is you want to make a list of your business fundamentals, the stuff that it takes to run your core business day-to-day. All right? Everything that it takes.

If you wanted your business to be what I call a model business, to make it a machine that it just runs with or without you, you’ve got to make a list of those fundamental activities, roles, tasks that need to happen on a daily, weekly, monthly basis for that to run. Then you need another list of business development activities. This is the stuff that you’re taking your fundamentals and you’re trying to improve upon it. You’re trying to grow. You’re trying to enhance a division. You’re trying to open up another location, whatever it might be.

You’ve got to be able to separate these two in your mind. I know it sounds really simple. But when you separate the fundamentals versus the business development, you could get really clear on the activities that you’re working on and almost treat it like you’ve got two jobs. You’ve got to run the business that you have, because if it’s working and it’s successful and maybe it just needs some optimization, great. Make sure that that’s handled first and foremost. And then on top of that, you do the business develop, right?

But you got to take care of the core. If you don’t take care of the core, it’s not sustainable. But if you’re not looking at what you’re becoming, that’s how you get stuck and you don’t break through to that next level. All right? So once you’ve got that, now you’ve got your one year, three year, 10 year targets, you’ve got your list of business fundamentals, your list of business development, what you want to do is you want to take a look at your objectives, your quarterly objectives, and break those down and make sure they are in alignment with your three year target.

Too often, companies are just trying to align with their one year target without even really thinking about the three year target. Three years is very… It comes quick. If you’ve been in business for a while or just anything that’s gone on in your life, you look back, three years comes quick. Let the 10 year be kind of that guiding light of where you’re headed. But with so many circumstances changing, it’s really hard to dial an exact plan to get to 10 years.

You’ve got your one year target, but make sure that your quarterly objectives are in line with your three year target. Put that in place. Let me know how that works. And until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll talk to you soon.

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Moving CEO Skill Development


SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares how to develop skills as a Moving CEO.

  • “I believe that anyone in the moving business can get to any level of success that they want if they focus on skill development.”
  • “When I first started, I didn’t know anything about the business. I literally did not know how to fold a pad, I didn’t know how to book a move, anything. So it became a checklist of skill development, I need to learn how to do this, I need to learn how to do that.”
  • “If you learn the right skills that you need at every stage of the game in the moving business, you can reach any level that you want, but if you don’t learn the skills that you need, if you don’t start to develop this mindset of skill development, it’s going to be very, very hard, and it’s going to be a struggle.”
  • “You’ve got to be able to adopt this mindset of, “Skill development is part of my life,” and constantly be looking at different areas that will help you to improve in your business and in your life, that’s what it’s all about.”
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

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Transcription

Louis Massaro:

I believe that anyone in the moving business can get to any level of success that they want if they focus on skill development. What do I mean by that? When I first started, I didn’t know anything about the business, right? I literally did not know how to fold a pad, I didn’t know how to book a move, anything. So it became a checklist of skill development, you need to learn how to do this, you need to learn how to do that, and if you learn the right skills that you need at every stage of the game in the moving business, you can reach any level that you want, but if you don’t learn the skills that you need, if you don’t start to develop this mindset of skill development, it’s going to be very, very hard, and it’s going to be a struggle, because you’re going to try to break through, you’re going to try to will your way through and just work harder and get the trial and error, and just go through all of this struggle and not break through that level that you really want to break through to.

If you’re joining me for the first time, my name’s Louis Massaro, I am founder and CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes in their business to increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life. And I was telling you about when I first started, and I had this little black book that I would keep in my pocket, and every problem that I would run across, I would make a note of, “I need to find a solution for this,” but those solutions, oftentimes, turned into skills that I needed to develop. I started to identify, “Okay, I don’t know how to do this thing. I need to learn how to do it, or I’m going to keep struggling with it.”

And when I first realized this, it was mind-blowing to me, because what seemed like impossible before, now I had hope. I looked it, and I said, “You know what? If I could just learn the skill of accounting and knowing my numbers, if I could just learn the skill of selling and booking moves, if I could just learn the skill of managing and leading my movers, if I could just learn the skill of hiring and training, I’ll get to where I want to go.”

And I watch this now with our clients, where we first start working with them, and some of them already have this mindset, they’re already there. They’re like, “Hey, I know I need to learn skills, that’s why we came to you, Louis. We need to learn how to do this, this, this, and this,” but when I see others that don’t recognize that as one of the most important things they need to do as a leader, one of the most important things they need to do as a moving CEO, and then they finally realize it, and they’re like, “Wow. If I just start going through my day and identifying issues that I’m having and saying, ‘If I had this skill, or I had that skill, would I be able to deal with this? Would I be able to address this?'”

And you might be thinking, “Louis, but like, it’s so hard, you don’t understand, it’s… I have the skills, I know everything I need to know, but I still struggle with it.” And my challenge to you would be, what’s causing you to continue to struggle with it, right? Because sometimes, skills aren’t necessarily skills of the trade, sometimes skills are, “How do I work out my thoughts? How do I get in a better state and out of stress, and focus my attention on the possibilities instead of the obstacles?” That’s a skill.

So, you’ve got to be able to adopt this mindset of, “Skill development is part of my life,” and constantly be looking at different areas that will help you to improve in your business and in your life, that’s what it’s all about. We don’t stop learning when we graduate from school, right? We’ve got to continue to teach ourselves, we’ve got to be able to identify, “What do I need to get what I want? To get where I want to go, what do I have to learn, what book do I have to read, what course do I need to take, what seminar do I need to go to? What person do I need to talk to and get their input on how they did something that I’m trying to do?” Skill development will get you to that next level, make it part of your regular routine. Keep a list of skills you’re actively working on.

So today, I want to give you three skills that I believe every moving company owner needs as a foundation to get to that next level, and you’ve got to be able to start developing these. The first one is self-management. If you can’t manage yourself, you can’t manage your business, you can’t manage your team. If you’re struggling to manage your team, you’re struggling to manage your business, let’s bring it back to self-management. Lot of people call this time management, but you can’t manage time. You can manage yourself within the time that you have. You can make choices on what you choose to do with your time.

First thing in the morning, what are you doing, what’s your morning routine like? What’s your workday startup routine like, what do you do first when you get to work, besides answer emails and react to everybody else’s false emergencies? How are you scheduling your priorities on your calendar to make sure that you’re moving the needle and getting the big impact items done? How are you managing your state of mind to keep you from focusing on, “It’s so hard, it’s a challenge, there’s no good people, customers are cheap,” to focusing on the possibilities of where you could go and what you could do with your business?

Self-management is a skill, something that you can learn. If you’re recognizing that right now as something that’s for you, jot that down on your list. Make a list, skill development list, put in your phone, put it wherever is convenient for you. And if self-management’s one of them, add it to the list.


The second one every moving company owner, every moving CEO needs to develop, is process creation, the skill of process creation, how to develop processes within your business. So many people know that they need to create processes and systems and SOPs, standard operating procedures, but they don’t do it because they don’t have the skill, right? So if you think about things that you don’t do, if you think about the things that you know you need to do, but you don’t do, and you really trace your thoughts back to the source, part of why you don’t do the things you do is because you don’t have the competence to do it, the skill, therefore you don’t have the confidence to go and do it.

In psychology, there’s something called the competence-confidence loop, which basically means the more competence you have, the more skills you develop, the more confidence you have, which will then have you go get more competence. Once you start to recognize like, “Wow, I’m developing skills,” you’ll get confidence to want to go get more skills, and that’ll just loop, confidence, competence, confidence, competence, and you’ll build strength, you’ll become better, you’ll be able to achieve more.

You can’t get to the next level in the business just by working hard, you got to develop those skills, so when we think about creating processes, or anything else that you might tend to kind of, “I know I need to do that, but I’m not going to get to it,” we’ve got to develop those skills. So whether you read books or whether you enroll in our Moving CEO Business Program, where we teach all of this stuff, whatever you need to do, these are skills that I believe every moving company owner needs to know, and they should go on your skill development list.

The third one I’m going to give you today is leadership, right? We’ve got to be able to lead people to bring your business to a level of success where you’ve got systems running the business, and now you’ve got people running those systems, you still have to lead those people, right? You still need to direct them to do what they need to do, you still need to inspire them to do the job. You still need to set the example of how you want your culture to be and how you want people to interact within your business.

And here’s the thing, if you’re looking at it like, “Louis…” Don’t feel bad if any of these skills, you don’t have, and you’re like, “Yeah, I’m not good at that, or I’m not good at that,” so what? I wasn’t good at anything when I started, right? And the reality is, you get good by determining what you need to get good at, and then intentionally going and developing that skill.

There’s tons of books out there on leadership. We teach it in the Moving CEO Business Program, but it’s like, you’ve got to be aware of it, and never look at this stuff as shortcomings. Never let the self-talk go into, “I’m no good, I don’t know how to do this, I’m no good, I don’t know how to do that,” and that’s how the mind tends to want to think. That’s how the fixed mindset tends to think. We’ve got to have a growth mindset, we’ve got to have a mindset that says, “You know what? I can grow personally. Physically, mentally, I could grow, gain skills, gain strength, to be able to do what it is that I want to do.”

That’s it. We can’t just think that we’re going to, by default, show up and be fantastic, right? Skill development. So make your list, right? Right now, even if these three things, you’re like, “Louis, I’m good. Those three, I got those covered.” What else? What other skills do you need to learn? Maybe you need to learn financials. Maybe you’re like, “Louis, I’m way beyond that, my company’s eight figures, I know financials.” Okay, maybe you need to learn mergers and acquisitions, maybe [inaudible 00:09:35] need to learn franchising, right? Maybe you need to learn different areas of ways to sell your business.

There’s always a new skill to learn, actively be working on something every single month. Actively have a list that you add to, and not look at it as self-defeat, like “I don’t know these things.” Look at it as an empowering act of saying, “I’m going to go learn these things, I’m going to prioritize them based upon what I need now to solve problems that I’m having in my business, to solve problems that I’m having in my life,” and with that, you will live an extraordinary life and build an extraordinary business. So until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life, leave me a comment, let me know what you thought of this episode, I’ll talk to you soon.

Posted on

Moving Companies’ Biggest Expense… Labor


SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares how you can increase profits by managing your labor expenses.

  • “As a moving company, one of your biggest expenses is labor. So in order to be profitable and make money, you’ve got to get your labor percentage under control.”
  • “Your labor percentage is directly tied to the amount of money you’re charging for your moves, and the amount of money that you’re paying to your movers. And if you don’t get this number under control… Well, let’s just say, I’ve seen companies go out of business because of this.”
  • “Or, you may end up in what may be an even worse situation. When you put in years and years of hard work and being in this business, but you’re stuck not making the profits that you should.”
  • “Start looking at your labor expenses and you’ll see for yourself, week after week, how it all plays out. You can be more profitable and you can get your labor percentage under control.”
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

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Transcription

Louis Massaro:

As a moving company, one of your biggest expenses is labor. So in order to be profitable, in order to make money, you’ve got to get your labor percentage under control. And what do I mean by that? I mean, if you’re doing, let’s say 100,00 in business and you’re spending 25,000 on your labor to do the 100,000 in business, you’re paying 25% in labor, right? That’s your labor percentage. Well, your labor percentage is directly tied to the amount of money you’re charging for your moves and the amount of money that you’re paying to your movers. And if you don’t get this number under control, I’ve seen companies go out of business because of this, all right? And the worst is like years and years of doing hard work and being in this business and not making the profit that you should, right?


If you’re joining me for the first time, my name is Louis Massaro. I am founder and CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes to increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life. Recently, I’m working with a private client who, they came in, they’ve got great crews, they’ve got a great reputation, they’ve got a great business, that they’ve been operating great team, but their profit margins are way too low. So I’m working with them on a few things. We’re taking a look at the different areas of their business. One of the things that we were able to identify immediately was the labor percentage being too high, right?


And you might say, “Well, Louis, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to just cut my labor cost? Am I supposed to just pay my movers less?” Absolutely not. You definitely don’t want to do that. Number one, these days, it’s hard to find labor, right? I’m advising a lot of companies to pay more for labor than they used to in order to be able to get and keep the good help. So reducing your payroll percentage is not about reducing the amount that you pay your movers. Let me just make that clear.


What it is about is looking at the entire pie, right? There’s only 100% of the pie. And if you’re spending 25, 35, 45% just in labor, that leaves that much less for everything else, right? So now you’ve got your other expenses, your other cost of goods sold. You’ve got your other fixed costs that you need to spend, and you’ve still got to be able to make a profit. So what we need to do is we need to lower the percentage of your payroll in relation to your gross revenue. So I’m going to give you three tips on how you do that today so that you could start making more money in your business without even needing to think about paying your movers less, right?


The first one is, sounds obvious, but raise your rates, all right? This is one of the fastest, quickest ways to get yourself in a position where you’re profitable, where you’re making money. You’re in this business to make money. You’re not in this business to provide free service, right? To go and be stressed out about all the work that you’re doing that to not have the money left over at the end of the day. Costs are going up, right? Everything from insurance, to fuel, to labor, across the board costs are going up. Your costs could go up too in order for your business to be able to thrive. And a lot of people are afraid to do that. That’s why you need a strong sales process to be able to raise your rates and do that strongly. I talked about that in other videos.


The second thing you want to do is every week you want to run your payroll percentage, okay? You want to know what your percentage is on a weekly basis, right? So let’s say you did, for round numbers, again, I’m just going to say 100,000 in the week, right? Good size company, right? Doing 100,000 a week. And you’re spending 25,000 in payroll. That’s 25%, okay? So start tracking that number, whatever it is for you, and establish your benchmark. From there, you want to monitor that every single week, because any dip or any increase in that number tells you that there’s something that’s changed, there’s something that’s different.


Which brings me to the third point, which is you want to monitor your overtime activity, right? You want to monitor overtime, because if you’re sending 60 hours to one crew, 60, 70 hours to one crew and they’re getting burnt out, and meanwhile, you’ve got other crews that are at 20 hours and they want more work, well, if you’re able to spread that out, that’s going to save you on overtime. It’s going to save you from burning out the other crews. But what happens is, typically, dispatchers or even the owner, if you’re the dispatcher, you kind of got your go-to cruise, your favorite cruise, and it’s just easier to give them the jobs. But you’ve got to be able to monitor the overtime and make sure that it’s not excessive.


It happens. Great. Guys are getting overtime. Awesome. But you just want to be able to spread that out. So raise your rates. Every single week, look at your payroll percentage to see where you’re at. This will help you identify all kinds of things. High overtime, theft, people working off the clock. There’s a lot of different things that that’s going to help you to identify. Start tracking it. And you’ll see for yourself week after week how it all plays out, all right? And then of course, monitor the overtime.


So I hope that this was helpful. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed making it for you. Until I see you next time, go out there every single day. Profit in your business and thrive in your life. I’ll talk to you soon.

Posted on

Increase Profits With Raving Fan Customers


SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares how you can increase profits by creating raving fans out of your customers.

  • “A raving fan customer is someone that’s going to give you five-star reviews across the board, they’re going to use you again in the future when they decide to move, and they’re going to tell all their friends about you and refer you to other people.”
  • “If you’re spending money on marketing to get moves, and you’re not focused on how to multiply those moves, meaning turn this one move into more moves, it’s only going to dip into your profits and you’re not going to be able to sustain a longterm successful moving company that way.”
  • “In order to really grow, in order to get to that next level, you’ve got to be able to reduce your marketing cost by getting more repeat customers, more referral customers, more reviews, which help your conversion and booking jobs.”
  • “In order to create raving fans, in order to keep getting those five star reviews consistently and not all of a sudden get a bomb of that one star comes in, you need to create consistency on the moves. And the best way to do it is create a moving process for your movers to follow.”
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

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What’s Missing from Your Mover Training?

Transcription

Louis Massaro :
The number one goal of every move should be to create raving fans. This is going to help you increase profits, have happier customers, reduce your stress and quite honestly, live a better quality of life. So what is a raving fan? A raving fan customer is someone that’s going to give you five star reviews across the board, right, all review platforms. They’re going to use you again in the future when they decide to move. They’re going to tell all their friends about you and refer you to other people.


And the reason this is so important is because if you’re going out and you’re spending money on marketing to get moves, to book moves, and you’re not focused on how do I multiply these moves, meaning turn this one move into more moves, it’s only going to dip into your profits and you’re not going to be able to sustain a longterm successful moving company that way.


In order to really grow, in order to get to that next level, you’ve got to be able to reduce your marketing cost by getting more repeat customers, more referral customers, more reviews, which help your conversion and booking jobs.


Now, if you’re joining me for the first time, my name is Louis Massaro. I’m founder and CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes in their business to increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life. And you know, when I first started my moving company, it was yellow pages. Like that was the main thing. It was back in 2000 and put a yellow page ad out and you’d book a move. If the customer had an issue on the job, you’d usually hear about it right then and there. But then after that, you didn’t really hear about it.


So you didn’t see the impact as much as you do, as I started to later on, of if a customer is upset, they’re not a raving fan, right? Or if a customer is a raving fan… Like the word of mouth back then compared to word of mouth today is a whole different ball game. Because word of mouth today, they’re online in two seconds while you’re still at the house, leaving that review, putting that social media post, right? It’s much easier for them to spread the good word or spread the bad word about your business, right?


So with that being the case, we started to look at it. And then when I really started to make the distinction, of course, we all want to go out and do a good job for our customers, right? That’s the intention, is to do that. So we set out to do that. But when it really started to connect, when I really started to see the impact on how it was affecting my business was when two forces came together. One was online reviews, right? When online reviews started coming out, when Yelp started to become a thing, it was like, we saw the impact of what good reviews had on our business and our ability to convert just potential customers into customers and also what bad reviews had on the business and how negatively that impacted our booking percentage, right? Not to mention the people that never call you because they see a negative review.


So once you have those reviews, and then we saw the impact of our marketing ROI report, meaning we were able to track how much money we were making with the marketing, the investment in our marketing and how much we were getting back, when those two things came together, here’s what it looked like. We started to see immediately that the more repeat and referral customers that we had, the less we were spending in marketing in relation to how much we were generating in moves, which increased profit, right? We also started to see that as our ratings went up, and we started to increase our ratings and actively work to get those five stars, that our sales conversion numbers started to go up.


So this really made an impact to the business and went from, “Hey, we should do a good job for our customers,” to the mission being the goal of every single move needs to be creating raving fans.


You might be thinking, “Louis, I want to do a good job. I want to create raving fans. The problem is, it’s hard to get my team on board. It’s hard to get the consistency out there to where we’re doing a good job every single time.” So I want to give you three points that are going to help you today.


The first thing is we’ve really got to look at your sales to service consistency, right? Your sales to service consistency. What does that mean? That means when a customer calls in and they speak to your sales person or your moving consultant or your move coordinator, whatever you call them, they get an expectation set. Whatever’s being said to that customer, and maybe it’s on an onsite estimate, whatever’s being said to that person is setting their expectation.


So when the movers then go out there, if the service is not consistent with the sale, meaning what they were told, there’s a media problem. Okay. And this is where the majority of customer service issues come from, right? So you want to do is you want to take a look at what’s being said on every single call or on every single estimate. And are we doing that? Are we actually doing it? Not like I want to do that. I tell my movers to do that, but is it actually happening? Like if you go and spot check the moves, are they doing the things that you say you’re going to do on the phone? Right? That’s sales to service consistency. That’s one of the first ways to prevent complaints.


The second point, second point, is you want to make sure that you’re training your movers, you’re training your movers. I know this sounds obvious, but it’s not just to train them on how to move, right? How to pad, how to load, how to build tiers in the truck, how to pack, how to strap, how to use the dolly, when to use a four wheeler, when to use a two wheeler. All that’s great and you need to do it, but you’ve got to train them on, number one, like how do you want them to interact with your customer. What does that look like? What’s the customer etiquette? They need to show concern for what the customer shows concern for, right? They need to understand how to deal and resolve conflict that may arise on the job, whether it’s between two movers, whether it’s between the customer and the company, and they’re stuck in the middle. How do they deal with that?


And most importantly, they need to know what your policies and your procedures are, right? What is it that you want from them? So much of the operational issues that I see with moving companies comes from a lack of communicating, with consistency, the policies and procedures that you want your team and your movers to follow. We can’t just send them out there with the move and the truck and some pads and some dollies and say, “Go move these people from point A to point B, right?” Because they’re expecting more than that. And you want consistency.


So even if you’re going out and you’re doing the moves yourself, right… I’m sure you want to grow. I’m sure you want to scale. I’m sure you want to bring more people on, or maybe you’ve got a handful of crews now. Maybe you’ve got a few trucks, but you want to bring on more, how do you create that consistency? You do that by making sure you’re training your movers on more than just how to move furniture, right?


The third point is your moving process. The actual process of moving needs to be documented, needs to have a checklist. You need to train your team on when you show up, here are the first things that you do, right? Here’s what you do when you’re getting loaded up and going to the destination. Once you get to the destination and you unload, here are the steps. Here is the checklist. Otherwise, you won’t have the consistency.


In order to create raving fans, in order to keep getting those five star reviews consistently and not all of a sudden get a bomb of that one star comes in. You’re like, “But we do such a good job. I’m a good person.” I get that. And when that one star comes in, it’s painful. It’s painful.


We need to create that consistency. And the best way to do it is create a moving process for them to follow, right? We call it the perfect move. If you want, I’ve got a free training. It’s called The Perfect Move Method. You could go watch it right now at louismassaro.com/theperfectmove. Right? Dive deeper. If you like what we’re talking about today, and this is resonating with you and you’re like, “Yeah, this could help me. I see. But how do I do it specifically?” Go to louismassaro.com/perfectmove. I’ve got a free training there for you for a limited time. Go check that out.


And until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business and thrive in your life. I’ll talk to you soon.

Posted on

Great First Impressions On Moving Day


SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares how your movers can make a great first impression for your customers when they arrive at a job.

  • “As a moving company, the first impression that you make when your crew shows up at the door of the customer’s house can determine the success of the entire move.”
  • “If when the movers show up, they don’t feel that professionalism, and the expectation that they had is not met, it could start to develop into a problem move.”
  • “When the crew walks up to the door, how do they introduce themselves? And what are the helpers or the other members of the crew doing at that time? The driver’s got to walk up, introduce himself, introduce the crew. The crew’s got to have pads on their shoulders, shrink wrap under their arm, everything ready to go, looking like they’re there to work.”
  • “Another thing you want to do is an immediate display of care and concern. What does that mean? Well, the helpers are walking in with pads, right? They’re walking in with door jamb protectors. They’re walking in with floor protectors. They need to start doing that right away.”
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

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Incentivize Your Movers and Create Raving Fans

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Transcription

Louis Massaro:
As a moving company, the first impression that you make when your crews shows up at the door of the customer’s house can determine the success of the entire move. Think about it, when they show up if the customer has an expectation of how that move’s going to go, and you already sold them on a professional service, otherwise they would have not chose your company they would’ve went with somebody else, right? So they’re expecting professionalism. And if when the movers show up, they don’t feel that, and they don’t experience that, and the expectation that they had is not met, it could start to develop into a problem move right? In the society that we’re and the way that people operate, they’re already thinking about the negative review that they’re going to post online.
So, this showing up, the first impression when you get to the job, it plants the seed in the customer’s mind of how that day is going to go. And if it’s not a good first impression, it could shift their entire way of being that day. So if you’ve got movers that are like man, this customer’s just hovering over me, they’re following me everywhere I go. Don’t touch this. Be careful with that. Chances are it’s because they didn’t sense and feel the professionalism from your crew when they showed up. So they don’t have the confidence in their ability to provide the service that you promised them.
If you’re joining me for the first time, my name’s Louis Massaro. I’m founder and CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes in their business to create raving fans, increased profits, reduced stress, and live a better quality of life. And I recently went through a move myself. We moved from Arizona back to Florida. And I could tell you from having gone through that experience, I want to kind of share with you what I experienced on the day of the move.
First of all, they were late. Okay? So it’s like that’s part of it. That’s understandable. Okay? That’s understandable. But then when the driver showed up, the driver showed up in a rental truck, okay? Not only am rental truck, in a U-Haul rental truck, right? Not even like a nice Penske, it was a U-Haul rental truck. And his helpers weren’t there, right? They showed up a few minutes later separately. They were hired help that he didn’t work with before. He didn’t know, the local agency sent them over. But when I went out to the truck and he opened up the truck, all his pads were just thrown all over the place. The dolly was thrown over there. And for me, I know that’s a huge no-no. No, you’ve got to have your truck on point. Straps holding up the pads, everything nice and neat, swept out.
But I’m like, you know what? I get it. I understand it. I see what happened. His tractor and his trailer broke down and went in the shop. Okay. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. I’m playing it out in my head the same way that the customers play it out in their head. Right? But I know how moves are supposed to go, unlike most customers. And so I’m like, okay, he grabbed all the pads and just threw them on the truck. He’s by himself. He just wanted to get here, so he’s not making me wait any longer, making us wait any longer. And that was the start of it. Right? And then the crews, they didn’t really know any…They didn’t know the driver. He didn’t introduce me to the crews. It was just not a good first impression. Right? And so it caused me to kind of, hover over them a little bit, which I normally would not do. I’d normally say, hey, do your thing. I’m not going to sit here and try to tell you how to do your job. But I needed to make sure that they did know how to do their job. That they were the right crew to be there before they loaded up all my stuff.
So the point of the story is that that initial first impression wasn’t good. And only because I understood all the variables and the reasons that it was happening was I able to start making sense of it for myself. But most customers will not do that. Right? Most customers, that initial first impression is…they’re going to start…In their mind, they’re already writing out that negative review that they’re going to post. They’re already looking for leverage of how they’re going to ask you for a discount when it comes time to pay the bill. So, you might be thinking Louis, but you know, we want to do a good job for all of our customers. My intention is to do a good job, but how do I get my crews to consistently do a good job? And what about the customers that no matter what you do, they’re unhappy?
And I think that, the amount of customers that no matter what you do, they’re unhappy is much smaller than most people, make it out to be. Right? I think it’s an excuse. And I think we need to go into the moves, not looking at, hey, no matter what we do, they’re not going to be happy. But instead, focus on making a great first impression, focus on creating a raving fan customer, and understand that it might not go a hundred percent right every single time. But still not go into it saying, they’re not going to be happy anyways, what’s the point? Right?
And then as far as your crew, you just need to be able to train them on what you want them to do. So let me give you three things that will be helpful for creating a great first impression, which will set the tone for the rest of the move. First one is the customer greeting. Right? You want to have a moving process. You want to have a checklist for your movers to go out there. And one of the first things on it is the customer greeting. When they walk up to the door, how do they introduce themselves? And what are the helpers or the other members of the crew doing at that time? Right? So for me, the driver’s got to walk up, introduce himself, introduce the crew. The crew’s got to have pads on their shoulders, shrink wrap under their arm, everything ready to go, looking like they’re there to work. Not over there smoking a cigarette, not messing around in the truck. Customer ordered three movers. They need to see three movers at the door. Right?
Then the second thing you want to do is an immediate display of care and concern. An immediate display of care and concern. What does that mean? Well, the helpers are walking in with pads, right? They’re walking in with door jamb protectors. They’re walking in with floor protectors. They need to start doing that right away. Right? Right away for the customer to see. You’re there, you’re not messing around. This puts a wow. The customer all of a sudden is like, okay, they’re here. They care about my stuff. They’re concerned about causing any damage, and they’re getting right to work. They’re not wasting time. You know, especially if you’re paying on a local move, if they’re paying by the hour and they don’t feel like you’re really moving along again, you’re planting the seeds for that bad review later on, or that unsatisfied customer. So that immediate display of care and concern is important. Right?
The third thing you want to do is make sure you’ve got a clean and organized truck. Clean and organized truck. And I know it sounds simple. And I know you might intend to do that. And I know you might want your crews to do that, but are you making sure that before that truck shows up at the customer’s house, before the door comes up, or the doors open, whatever type of trucks you’ve got, that the pads are nicely, neatly stacked and folded. The dolly, it’s strapped in, it’s swept out and it looks good. Because you have to realize, the customer doesn’t look at it and just go, oh, it’s a truck. We do this every day. Oh, those are pads. They’re gonna look at it and say, my stuff is going in there. Right? All my belongings are going in that truck. It should not look like an episode of Hoarders in your truck. It should look like a nice clean place where their stuff is going to go. All right?
These are three simple tips. If you want to dive deep into what I call creating the perfect move method, I’ve put together a free training. It’s called the perfect move method. I’ll break down for you how to set this up, the three phases that you need to go through. You can get it for free at my website. It’s louismassaro.com/perfectmove. louismassaro.com./perfectmove. Go get that free training and start creating more raving fans, which bring in more profits. They reduce stress. You have happier customers. You’re prouder of the job that you do, which all leads to a better quality of life. So until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll talk to you soon.

Posted on

2021 State of the Moving Industry


SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares three things to help you pivot to the new way of operating in the moving business and help you thrive in 2021.

  • “2020 has changed the game in the moving industry. And in 2021, things are going to continue to change. Things are going to continue to change to this new way of moving where the old way of doing things is not going to work. We’ve got this major opportunity in front of us. This summer, I don’t know that there’s going to be enough moving companies to service all of the moves that are going to be happening. And if you’re prepared for that, if you’re in a position where you think about it like this big tidal wave that’s coming in and you learn to ride that wave, you’re going to ride that wave all the way to the bank. But if you don’t learn to ride that wave, that wave is going to come crashing down on your head.”
  • “And there’s really so much that needs to be adjusted and needs to be changed, but I want to give you three things today that I think will really help you to not only thrive this year, but set yourself up for this new world of moving that we’re in. The first one is you’ve got to make sure that your virtual sales game is on point. What do I mean by that? Not only do you need to be able to give estimates virtually, whether that’s over the phone or whether that’s a video estimate, you’ve also got to be able to look at this great opportunity that we have in front of us to hire remote salespeople. A lot of my private clients this year, I had them hiring teams of remote people in different parts of the country that a lot of times they could get for a lot cheaper than they can in their own city.”
  • “If you want to succeed and you don’t want that wave crashing down on your head, it’s time to step up that mover hiring process and be diligent about it. There’s no simple way about it, keep those ads running. Keep those interviews going, get your hiring process, get your training process dialed in. Or you’re just not going to be able to ride that wave of opportunity all the way to the bank, you’ve got to be able to sell the moves and you’ve got to make sure you’re selling them at a price that is profitable for you. And then you’ve got to make sure you got good quality going out there and doing the job. I know you’re going to say, “Louis, this is nothing new. This is nothing special.” But it is, it’s a matter of how much attention you’re putting to these things, how much focus you’re putting on them. The stuff that we used to take for granted can no longer be taken for granted.”
  • “The way you build a business is you build your processes. You build your SOPs, that’s building a business, that gives you something that you’re… You’re building something, a set of systems, a set of processes that run your business consistently, predictably without you. If you don’t have that, you’re not building a business, you’re just spinning on the hamster wheel. So as you are building your new virtual sales process, as you’re building your mover hiring and training process, document those processes, build for the future, have your playbook for your business, so that you know this is how we do things. Because if you don’t have that, your people aren’t going to know what to do. You’re not going to be able to pivot and change quickly.”
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

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Commit to Mastery in Your Moving Company

TRANSCRIPTION

Louis Massaro:
2020 has changed the game in the moving industry. And in 2021, things are going to continue to change. Things are going to continue to change to this new way of moving where the old way of doing things is not going to work. We’ve got this major opportunity in front of us. This summer, I don’t know that there’s going to be enough moving companies to service all of the moves that are going to be happening. And if you’re prepared for that, if you’re in a position where you think about it like this big tidal wave that’s coming in and you learn to ride that wave, you’re going to ride that wave all the way to the bank. But if you don’t learn to ride that wave, that wave is going to come crashing down on your head. And I could tell you this from over the past year with the hundreds of moving company owners that we work with and not to mention my private clients that I work with real closely, I’m looking at their financials, I’m reviewing their processes, I’m helping them scale.

I’m helping them grow. I’m helping them franchise. I’m helping them see what works today and kind of sitting there as they make the decisions in their business and helping them guide them. Well, we see what’s working, we see what’s not working. And we see that there’s a pivot that needs to change. And if we don’t do this, I’m concerned that a lot of companies are just going to end up in a really bad position. Last year, I think a lot of companies had moves just falling on their laps. I call it the COVID gift to moving companies. COVID hit, it was like, “Oh, shit, what do we do? We’re going to go out of business.” And then all of a sudden, most companies had the busiest summer they ever had.

And although a lot of them may have put in processes and a lot of them may have done a lot to ramp that up, a lot of it was a gift. A lot of it fell on your lap, I think you could agree on that. And I don’t want you to take that for granted and think that that’s something that’s just going to happen and that that’s even healthy for your business because not all business is good business. We need to make sure it’s profitable business. We need to make sure you’re doing a good job for your customers so that you continue to get raving reviews, you continue to get repeat and referral customers. And you might be thinking, Louis, if it’s going to be so busy, what do I need to change? What do I need to do? And I just want to give you three things that are going to help you in 2021, to really pivot to this new way of thinking, this new way of operating within the moving business.

And there’s really so much that needs to be adjusted and needs to be changed, but I want to give you three things today that I think will really help you to not only thrive this year, but set yourself up for this new world of moving that we’re in. The first one is you’ve got to make sure that your virtual sales game is on point. What do I mean by that? Not only do you need to be able to give estimates virtually, whether that’s over the phone or whether that’s a video estimate, you’ve also got to be able to look at this great opportunity that we have in front of us to hire remote salespeople. A lot of my private clients this year, I had them hiring teams of remote people in different parts of the country that a lot of times they could get for a lot cheaper than they can in their own city.

They could have more coverage at different hours and they could run the entire thing virtually, meet with them, manage them, make sure that everything is used in a central database, in a CRM. I know most of the moving industry now is on SmartMoving, company that I co-founded, but whatever CRM you’re using, you’ve got the tools. We’ve got Zoom, we’ve got the CRM, we’ve got the ability to monitor their phone calls to see what’s going on. And to be able to adjust and pivot, we’ve got to think differently than, “I need salespeople in my office.” We need to think differently than, “I need an estimator to go out and do the estimate in the home.” Those things are still good, but what’s going to really help you adapt is stepping up your virtual sales game. Number two, mover hiring.

And you’re going to say, “Louis, that’s nothing new. That’s something that’s been around forever. We’ve always struggled and needed to hire movers,” but now more than ever, you’ve got to make this a priority. Not just put an ad once in a while when you need some people. Have a continuous process where you’re constantly recruiting, constantly hiring, constantly training and you’ve got somebody managing this process. There’s a shortage of movers. So we’ve got this demand for people moving, we saw it all 2020, the huge demand, everybody’s moving to a new home. They want more space. They want to get out of big cities. There’s a lot happening.

And then we’ve got people that don’t want to work, number one, they’re getting handouts or they’re have an easier job driving for Uber or driving for Amazon Prime, making deliveries. So we’ve got this demand, but in order to fulfill the demand, we need the movers. The companies that I’m working with that are setting up their mover hiring process and running that as if it’s as important as their sales process, are the ones that are winning and that’s what you’re going to need to do to win. You can’t say, “Well, Louis, nobody wants to work. Louis, it’s so hard to find movers. Louis, I can’t find good help in my city. My city is different, you don’t understand.”

I hear you with all those excuses, but if you want to succeed and you don’t want that wave crashing down on your head, it’s time to step up that mover hiring process and be diligent about it. There’s no simple way about it, keep those ads running. Keep those interviews going, get your hiring process, get your training process dialed in. Or you’re just not going to be able to ride that wave of opportunity all the way to the bank, you’ve got to be able to sell the moves and you’ve got to make sure you’re selling them at a price that is profitable for you. And then you’ve got to make sure you got good quality going out there and doing the job. I know you’re going to say, “Louis, this is nothing new. This is nothing special.” But it is, it’s a matter of how much attention you’re putting to these things, how much focus you’re putting on them. The stuff that we used to take for granted can no longer be taken for granted, which brings me to my third point, which is build for the future.

We talk about building our business, “I’m building my business. I’m building my business.” The way you build a business is you build your processes. You build your SOPs, that’s building a business, that gives you something that you’re… You’re building something, a set of systems, a set of processes that run your business consistently, predictably without you. If you don’t have that, you’re not building a business, you’re just spinning on the hamster wheel. So as you are building your new virtual sales process, as you’re building your mover hiring and training process, document those processes, build for the future, have your playbook for your business, so that you know this is how we do things. Because if you don’t have that, your people aren’t going to know what to do. You’re not going to be able to pivot and change quickly. The companies that I work with, they’ve got their processes.

They’ve got them dialed in, or at least they do once we work together for a little while. And when a change needs to happen, like many changes needed to happen last year in order to adjust, in order to pivot, you go to the process, you go to the playbook, you see what’s there. You make the adjustment, you train the team. You let everybody know this is the new way that we do it. And you move forward. You’ve got to be agile. You’ve got to be able to make shifts and pivots quickly. And if you don’t already have everybody on the same page in alignment with how things need to be done, it’s very hard to do that.

When you’ve got the processes in place, that’s building a business for the future. Right now, we’re also facing the possibility of a recession coming, so it’s like, look, we’ve got this major opportunity right now in 2021. And I don’t know when it’s going to happen. I’m not claiming to be an economist, but I can tell you that I lived through the 2008 recession and it was not fun. I had five, six offices at the time and it was not fun. Just to open my long distance division, there was a point there where I thought, man, am I going to go out of business? Why was that? It was because I had built my business to run in a good economy. It wasn’t prepared for the bad economy. Luckily I was able to adapt and adjust and pivot and make the adjustments that I needed right away to not only get things back on track, but then take it to a whole nother level.

I want you to be prepared. I want to make sure that whatever comes… We don’t know. We didn’t know coronavirus was going to come, we had no idea. We don’t know what’s coming next, but you need to be prepared and you need to have your business set up to thrive in a great economy. You need to have your business set up to thrive in a bad economy because the moving business is as close to a recession proof business as you could get. And as we’ve seen it, it was [inaudible 00:09:27] the pandemic pretty well too. But it’s not a matter of surviving, it’s a matter of thriving. It’s not a matter of just making a few bucks over the summer, it’s about consistent profits all year long, while you keep your sanity, while you lower your stress, while you enjoy your life.

This business should be your vehicle to financial freedom and opportunity to provide a great service to your community, to bring up your team, to bring up your crew and help guide everybody to that next level in your business, in your life. Now’s the time, take these three steps. Start there and continuously be thinking about how you need to improve to get to that next level, my friend. Until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. Make sure you’re prepared for the opportunity that’s in front of us in 2021. I’ll talk to you later.

Posted on

Incentivize Your Movers and Create Raving Fans


SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares how to incentivize your moving crews to help you create raving fans out of your customers.

  • “We often think that the hourly rate that we pay somebody in their regular pay structure is enough to keep them fired up to do a good job. The reality is, as a moving company, your biggest goal on every move, your number one goal, is to create raving fans. You want to create raving fans so that you get more repeat and referral customers. In order to do that, you’ve got to have everybody on board knowing that that is our number one objective, to create happy customers, raving fans.”
  • “If you don’t have incentives, if you don’t have a way of keeping your crew focused on that goal and ways for them to earn extra for money, don’t be surprised if they leave and they go work somewhere else. In order to keep quality movers around, they need to see how they can help the company, but also help themselves. What’s in it for them.”
  • “When I first got in the moving business, when I started my company, I was 19, and I had no idea what I was doing. I just paid the movers their rate. We thought that that was good. Right? We’re paying you to do the job, do the job. When I started to realize how important getting those repeat and referral customers were, and then later on getting the reviews, I was like, “I need to incentivize them to really go out there and do a good job.””
  • “The number one thing is to make sure we’ve got happy customers. If we’ve got happy customers, then I want to incentivize the movers. If they go out there, and they do a great job, and that customer’s happy, I want to incentivize them.” That was the start of my mover bonus points program. It was a program that I created that essentially was like, “Look, if the customer’s happy, you get points. If the customer’s unhappy, we take away points.”
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

What’s Missing from Your Mover Training?

Hiring Movers: Qualities and Skills to Look For

How to Hire Movers for Your Moving Company

5 Keys To Hiring Movers for Your Moving Company

Positive Reviews, “Cheap Customers” & Charging Movers For Damage?

TRANSCRIPTION

Louis Massaro:
If you want to keep your great movers working for you, you want to keep the morale high, you’ve got to have a way to incentivize them. What I mean by that is we often think that the hourly rate that we pay somebody in their regular pay structure is enough to keep them fired up to do a good job. The reality is, as a moving company, your biggest goal on every move, your number one goal, is to create raving fans. You want to create raving fans so that you get more repeat and referral customers. In order to do that, you’ve got to have everybody on board knowing that that is our number one objective, to create happy customers, raving fans. If don’t have incentives, if you don’t have a way of keeping your crew focused on that goal and ways for them to earn extra for money, don’t be surprised if they leave and they go work somewhere else. In order to keep quality movers around, they need to see how they can help the company, but also help themselves. What’s in it for them.

If you’re joining us for the first time, my name’s Louis Massaro. I’m founder and CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes in their business so they can increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life. When I first got in the moving business, when I started my company, I was 19, and I had no idea what I was doing. I just paid the movers their rate. We thought that that was good. Right? We’re paying you to do the job, do the job. When I started to realize how important getting those repeat and referral customers were, and then later on getting the reviews, I was like, “I need to incentivize them to really go out there and do a good job.” When we first rolled out the idea of incentivizing them, we had this 12-question call that we did with every customer after the move to find out how everything did. I created this whole big complex structure for how to incentivize the moves. Right? Were they on time? Were they in uniform? Everything from what the customer had to say.

It was 12 different questions, and we based this whole reward program structure on that. It was super complicated to even teach to the movers, like, “Hey, here’s how you’re getting paid.” I explained it all and they’re like, “I don’t get it.” Right? It was complicated to keep track of administratively. One day I was just like, “What are we trying to accomplish here? What are we trying to accomplish with this program? I was like, “The number one thing is to make sure we’ve got happy customers. If we’ve got happy customers, then I want to incentivize the movers. If they go out there, and they do a great job, and that customer’s happy, I want to incentivize them.” That was the start of my mover bonus points program. It was a program that I created that essentially was like, “Look, if the customer’s happy, you get points. If the customer’s unhappy, we take away points.

At the end of the month, those points convert into dollars, and you get paid a bonus every single month. It became a huge hit in the company because it was like, “Guys go out there and make the customer happy.” Sometimes maybe there’s a scratch on a dresser, but the customer’s still happy. They understand. Right? Things happen. If they’re focused on what you want them to be focused on, which is making that customer happy, and they make that happen, you want to give them an incentive. Right? You might be saying, “Louis, well, why would I incentivize them to do their job? Why would I pay extra to do their job?” The reality is, people need reward and recognition. Right? It’s not just about the incentive every single month. This was a big deal. We had a little, in the morning when the MBPs, as we call it, the mover bonus points were ready, we had a little ceremony. We passed them out. Who was in first place? Who was in second place? They were so excited about it.

The talk was like, “Hey, what did you get for MBPs? What did you get for MBPs?” It created a culture where we were now focused on creating happy customers, raving fans. Now, they’re also getting extra money. I’m sure you’ve got movers that come to you, they want to raise. This an opportunity to give them a raise, but they get to earn it. Right? Instead of you just giving it to them, they get to earn it. You keep it super simple. Right? If you don’t have a way to incentivize your crews and incentivize your movers, start with something super simple.

Let me give you three steps that will really help you. The first thing you’ve got to do in order to do this is you’ve just got to establish your customer rating process. Meaning, how are you going to find out if the customer’s happy or not happy? Right? There’s a few points where you could do this. You could do this on the move itself. Right? If your dispatcher is clocking the crew out, and they’re speaking to the customer, they could find out how the move went. If your CRM, I know a lot of moving companies in the industry are using CRM, which is smart moving software, which will send out immediately a text message and an email with a whole rating process that it takes them through to find out how the movers did, or are you calling the customer after the job?

You’ve got to establish, “How are we going to determine if they were happy or if they weren’t happy? Okay? Once you’ve got that established, create a simple reward program. Right? If you want to learn my mover bonus points, definitely go join our moving CEO business program, movingceo.com. There’s more information down below this video, but create something simple. If you remember, I was saying, we created something really complex. I’ll talk to private clients, or I’ll talk to moving company owners, and I was like, “I’ve got this system, and we give them this many points for this, and this many points for that. We deduct this many points.” I’m like, “Okay, administratively, tell me the process to manage that every week and every month.” They’re like, “Oh, it’s a nightmare.” I’m like, “Exactly.” Keep it simple. For us, there was customer’s happy? You get points. Customer’s unhappy? We take away a certain amount of points.

At the end of the month, those points turn into dollars, they get a bonus check. Easy, simple. Right? Don’t over complicate it. The idea is that you just want to get it going. Third step is introduce it to your crew. Right? Have a meeting and say, “Hey, listen, “We’ve introduced this new program. We want to incentivizing you guys for happy customers and doing a great job. We know you work really hard, and we want to show some appreciation for it.” Right? That’s it. Set up a reward program. Set up some incentives. Show your guys that you care. Let them go out and be focused on what you’re focused on, which is creating happy customers. They’re going to be five-star reviews. Repeat the move with you again and referrals. They refer you to somebody else. Go implement that. Let me know how it works. Until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll see you next time.

Posted on

What’s Missing from Your Mover Training?


SUMMARY

In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares what areas you must train your movers on besides simply how to “move”.

  • “Your movers are the front line. Your movers are the face of your company. Your movers are the ones that are going to spend the most time with your customers so we’ve got to do more than just train them how to pad a chair or train them how to load a truck. They need to know how to deal with every situation that happens on the move. They need to know what you expect them to do with each and every move while they’re there with the customer. They need to be trained in customer service.”
  • “If you don’t define exactly how you want your movers to behave on the job and the steps that you want them to take from the time that they get there until the time that they’re done and then train them on that, you’re going to have a lot of stress, you’re going to have a hard time growing your company, and you’re going to have movers that are also disgruntled because they don’t have clear direction on what to do.”
  • “The basics of moving, training them on how to pad, how to load, how to protect floors, how to protect door jams, how to pack, how to inventory, all the stuff that goes along with moving, that’s great… But if you miss the components that I’m about to share with you in this video, you’re not going to have the customer satisfaction and create the raving fans that you want to really build your business, to get those reviews, that long-term sustainable success in moving.”
  • “When you set up your training program, of course, train them how to pad, train them how to load, train them how to use the dolly. Absolutely. But the three things that will take your company to the next level are training them in customer etiquette, resolving conflict, and training them on your company policies and procedures and how you do things, what the process is for each thing that they do. Put these in place, apply these in your business. That’s how you get to the next level.”
  • Watch the video to get full training.

HOT NEWS & DEALS!

  1. Join the Moving CEO Challenge: Official Louis Massaro Community Facebook Group! A place for moving company owners to connect, share ideas, and inspire one another. Click here to join!
  2. Latest Instagram!
    Check out @LouisMassaro for new announcements, valuable tips, and enlightening videos to take your moving company to the NEXT LEVEL!

RELATED POSTS

Hiring Movers: Qualities and Skills to Look For

How to Hire Movers for Your Moving Company

5 Keys To Hiring Movers for Your Moving Company

Positive Reviews, “Cheap Customers” & Charging Movers For Damage?

Paying Movers: 1099 Contractor or W-2 Employee

TRANSCRIPTION

Louis Massaro:

Properly training your movers is one of the most important things you could do to grow a successful moving company, but you’ve got to do more than just train them how to actually move. Your movers are the front line. Your movers are the face of your company. Your movers are the ones that are going to spend the most time with your customers so we’ve got to do more than just train them how to pat a chair or train them how to load a truck. They need to know how to deal with every situation that happens on the move. They need to know what you expect them to do with each and every move while they’re there with the customer. They need to be trained in customer service.


If you don’t define exactly how you want your movers to behave on the job and the steps that you want them to take from the time that they get there until the time that they’re done and then train them on that, you’re going to have a lot of stress, you’re going to have a hard time growing your company, and you’re going to have movers that are also disgruntled because they don’t have clear direction on what to do. If you’re joining us for the first time, my name’s Louis Massaro. I’m Founder and CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes in their business to increase profits, reduce stress, and live a better quality of life.


When I started my moving company, what is it, 20 years ago now, I was a 19 year old kid, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know how to move furniture, I didn’t work for a moving company before that, and to try to train my guys was intimidating. And finally, I was like, you know what? I just need to bite the bullet here and go to my best mover and say, “Listen, I need you to show me the ropes. I need you to show me what to do.” And he showed me everything, took me under his wing. Got to work for me, took me under his wing and said, “Let’s start. Here’s how pads are folded. Here’s how we load a truck and build tiers in the truck. Here’s how we pad a dresser and here’s how we pad a chair.” And I learned the basics of how to move. That component can be taught easily once one person in your company knows how to do that.


So whether that’s you or whether you’ve got a mover that is a great mover that can train that to other people that could be taught. But what can’t be taught by other movers or that doesn’t just happen naturally is the intention of how you want those movers to act, behave, and execute on that move. Once I define, “Look, here’s our company policies. Here’s the procedures. Here’s how we do things. Here’s how I want you to show up to the office. Here’s how I want you to show up on the job. If a problem happens, if there’s a damage, here’s what you do next,” once I defined all of that, that really helped me build my company, which I eventually took to a nationwide, eight figure business where we were doing 12,000 moves a year. And I tell you that because, you may say, “Louis, it’s important to train them to be a master mover. They’ve got to know how to do everything before they get out on that truck.”


And after doing 12,000 moves a year, what I can tell you is, if there’s a claim, if there’s a damage, that could be resolved. The problems that can’t be resolved are when you know the mover doesn’t interact well with the customer, the company completely drops the ball, movers get into it on a job in front of the customer, lack of professionalism. Those are the types of jobs where that problem isn’t easily resolved. So the thing that you want to focus on other than, of course, the basics, training them on how to pad, how to load, how to protect floors, how to protect door jams, how to pack, how to inventory, all the stuff that goes along with moving, that’s great, but if you miss the components that I’m about to share with you, you’re not going to have the customer satisfaction and create the raving fans that you want to really build your business, to get those reviews, that longterm sustainable success in moving. You’ve got to make sure that you’re doing these three things.


So the first one is, you’ve got to train your movers in customer etiquette. They need to understand first and foremost where that customer’s coming from. They need to understand that, that customer is uprooting their entire life and moving to a new place, which is stressful by itself, but now they’ve got strange people, movers, coming in. No offense, whoever it is, we’re all strangers. If they don’t know you, you’re a strange person coming in their house. They’ve got strange people coming in their house and touching everything, lifting everything, opening their drawers, going through everything. It’s very invasive. So they need to understand that, you need to train them on that, and train them on how to have customer etiquette while on the job. Give you an example. So let’s say the customer says to your foreman or one of your head guys or your driver and brings them over and says, “This table here, this is an antique. It was from my grandmother. Can you guys be really careful with it?”


What will normally happen is the movers will be like, “Oh yeah, yeah. No problem. Sure.” They might be nice about it. What needs to happen is they need to go above and beyond to show concern for what the customer’s concern is. Meaning, instead of just saying, “Okay, yeah sure, no problem,” the foreman or whoever it is needs to call over the other guys and say, “Hey guys, come over here for a second. Mrs. So-and-so pointed out to me that this piece right here, it’s a really special piece, so let’s all just make sure that we pay really good attention to this and we take extra good care of that.” That little thing, even if it’s unnecessary to just get the job done, will put that customer at ease, let that customer back off the movers, and not be hovering over them in everything they do. If you’ve ever had a customer that just is on your movers for everything they do, it’s because they don’t feel like they have a professional crew there and they feel like they need to be on top of them.


Customer etiquette, if the customer has an issue, the customer has a problem, how do you want them to speak to that customer? This is the type of stuff that needs to be trained. The moving, the carrying, how to use the dolly, train them on that as well, but that will come time of doing it over and over and over again on jobs. Repetition, repetition, repetition. They’ll get better and better at that. All right, so the first thing you want to make sure you train them on is customer etiquette. That also includes, how do they introduce themselves when they get to the job? When they show up, let me ask you how you would want your movers to show up. Would you want them to show up where the drivers here, he rings the doorbell, “Hey, we’re here. I need you to sign this paperwork,” and the other guys are nowhere to be found?


Or does the whole crew show up at the door, the driver’s got the paperwork or his tablet, the helpers got pads and shrink wrap and door jams and everything ready to go, and they introduce themselves to the customer, he introduces the helpers and the rest of the crew? Customer etiquette, make sure that, that’s part of your training program. The second thing you want to make sure is in there is resolving conflict. Resolving conflict, when stuff happens on the job, what do they do? What do they do? Too many times, companies just send guys out, “Hey, go out there,” and they have no clue and what to do when things happen and they wonder why a problem, a damage on the job, or something that the customer thought was going to be one way but was a different way, or maybe the neighbor comes and says, “Hey, you guys need to move your truck,” or whatever it is, who’s training them on how to deal with those situations?


So you want to make sure that part of your training has resolving conflict. “Here’s what happens when the customer’s upset. Here’s what I need you guys to do. Here’s what happens when there’s a damage. Here’s what happens if two movers get in an argument on the job.” Train them on resolving conflict. And the last piece, and really something that will solve most of the problems, are training them on the company policies and procedures, how you want things done. “Here’s our policy on attendance. Here’s our policy on uniform. Here’s our policy on truck inventory. Here’s our policy on your hours, on clocking in and clocking out. Here’s our policy on so on and so on and so on.” You’ve got to train them on what your policies are. I talk to companies all the time and they wonder why their movers just don’t listen and they don’t do things the way that they want them to do it. And I’m like, “Are you training them on these things? Are you repeating those every single day?”


You might have a mover meeting every day or in the morning and people look for fresh topics. Well, maybe you just need to say the same thing every single day until they get it. Repetition, repetition, repetition. So when you set up your training program, of course, train them how to pad, train them how to load, train them how to use the dolly. Absolutely. But the three things that will take your company to the next level are training them in customer etiquette, resolving conflict, and training them on your company policies and procedures and how you do things, what the process is for each thing that they do. Put these in place, apply these in your business. Let me know how it works. And until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business, thrive in your life. I’ll see you next time.