SUMMARY
In this episode of The Moving Mastery Podcast, Louis Massaro shares why you must know if you actually need to scale, and how you’re going to do it before you start to grow your moving company.
- “Scaling your moving company is one of the best ways for you to build wealth and create freedom so that you can enjoy your life and not be stuck working in the business all the time.”
- “Scaling prematurely or scaling when you’re not ready, or scaling when you don’t have the model business set up, could really cause a lot of stress, really cause a lot of aggravation, and put a strain on your existing business.”
- “Let’s make more with what we have. Let’s make the day-to-day more efficient. Let’s find those profits because most times it feels like there’s just money laying all over the floor and it’s just a matter of tightening a few things up, right? So you want to start there.'”
- “Now you ask yourself the question, do I need the scale? We talk about scale and growth and getting to the next level and that’s all great, but do you need to? And so for me, when I work with clients, the first thing I want to know is, where do you want to get to in your life? How much money do you want to make? What’s it going to take to live the life you want to live? You might not need to open more offices based on what you want.”
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TRANSCRIPTION
Louis Massaro:
Scaling your moving company is one of the best ways for you to build wealth and create freedom so that you can enjoy your life and not be stuck working in the business all the time. But what does it mean to scale your moving company?
Scaling a business basically means taking a model that works and that has all the systems and the processes and everything is just in order, ready to go, right? It’s a model business and then scaling it, growing it, duplicating it, expanding it. That’s scaling a business. And even though it’s one of the best ways for you to create more abundance and more financial freedom for yourself, it’s also one of the ways that if it’s not done correctly or it’s done prematurely, can cause you the most stress, the most overwhelmed. Costs you a ton of money and put a ton of strain on your current business.
If you’re joining me for the first time, my name is Louis Massaro, 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 first moving company, I was 19 years old. I had no idea what I was doing and I worked out of a truck rental yard. I’ve rented two trucks and over a period of a couple of years, I was able to build a really strong local moving business that I thought was a solid model that I would then be able to scale.
So I started opening additional locations. My first year that I decided to scale and open additional locations, I opened an additional three locations, right? So now here I am, I went from one office, one moving company. Now I had four moving companies and what I realized really quick was that the way that I ran one, was totally different than the way I needed to be running multiple locations, right? The way that the consistency and the predictability of that one did not translate to these other offices.
So now I found myself having to kind of reign them all back in, fly from city to city, and something that I wouldn’t have been able to do had I not been a young 22, 23 year old guy that was just getting started. I didn’t have a family and obligations and things holding me back, but it was one of the most stressful times to build something that created, like a monster, that I had to reign.
in. Right? So that’s when I say, scaling prematurely or scaling when you’re not ready, or scaling when you don’t have the model business set up, could really cause a lot of stress, really caused a lot of aggravation, and put strain on your existing business, which is what it did. Because now, when I had to go be at these other locations, I wasn’t at my original office, right? So after a ton of flights back and forth, in time going here and there, I was able to develop processes and systems that allowed me to get it all under control. That allowed me to have consistency and predictability across all those locations and then grow.
Nationwide, we went to $20 million year and so I’m sharing this story because people will say, but Louis, I want to grow. I want to make more money. I want to scale. I want to get to that next level. I’ve got my friend or my dispatcher or my brother, they’re ready to open up another location. Or they say, I’m doing local moves and I’m turning down so much long distance, I need to get into long distance.
What I would tell you, and what I tell my clients is that look, before you scale, you’ve got to get your model business on point. You’ve got to have something that is set up in a way to where if you’re going to duplicate it or you’re going to do more of it, that it’s not just creating more problems and more issues, but that it’s a nice, smooth operation that you’re growing and you’re scaling. ,I’m all about growth. I’m all about scaling, but you’ve got to do it the right way.
So I want to give you three tips that you can take and really start laying the foundation for what you need to do to go and scale your business. Because like I said, it is the best way for you to really create that financial freedom, that personal freedom and that longterm wealth. And so I want to give you three things.
The first one is you want to fine tune your fundamentals. Okay? Fine tune your fundamentals and what that means is in the moving business, there are five fundamentals. In everything that you do in your moving business, is in one of these five categories. Okay?
The first one is lead generation or marketing. The second one is booking moves or sales. The third one is servicing moves or operations. The fourth one is creating raving fans or customer service. And the fifth one is accounting and knowing your numbers.
These five areas, time and time again, companies that I work with, if we dive in to these five areas and look for areas that can be fine tuned and you know right now there’s things that you’re thinking about, as we mentioned these five areas, where you’re like, yeah, I need to tighten that up. I need to tighten that up. What we found time and time again, is there so much profit sitting in those fundamentals and so before we go and expand and create more complexity in our day-to-day, in our life, in our business, let’s fine tune what we have. Right? Let’s make more with what we have. Let’s make the day-to-day more efficient. Let’s find those profits because most times it feels like there’s just money laying all over the floor of the companies that we work with and it’s just a matter of tightening a few things up, right? So you want to start there.
Second thing you want to do to prepare yourself to really scale, is become a process driven company. You know, you’re either a process-driven company, or you’re a people driven company. Most companies are people driven and what that means is they bring, they look for the best person they could find for the position. They hire somebody. They bring them in and let’s say it’s a salesperson. They’ll train a sales person and they’ll do it one way. They’ll train another sales person. They’ll do it a little bit differently. Or their movers, one crew will go out. They’ll address the customer when they come to the door in one way, and another crew will address the customer, not even address the customer in a totally different way, right? There’s no consistency because it’s people driven.
When you have people driven companies, there’s no way that you could scale that because you can’t duplicate people. You can’t clone people. So even if you’ve got great people, in order to scale, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got a process driven company.
What that means is everything that gets done in your business is done the exact same way, right? The way your movers handle pick up. The way they handle delivery. The way your sales team gives estimates. The way close out jobs and handle customer service and do your books. Everything is done, the exact same way, regardless of the person. Because what you want is, you want the processes to run the business and then you want the people to run those processes and until your company’s process driven, you’re going to have a really, really, really, really hard time scaling with a people driven company.
So listen, if this all makes sense to you and you want to go deeper, I suggest you take a look at my Moving CEO Business Program. There’s a link down below. I’m about to get to the third point here too. I want to make sure I give you the tools and set you up in a way where you’ve got everything you need. So go check that out. It’s called the Moving CEO Business Program. There’s a link down below for you.
The third step of what you need to do to prepare yourself for scale, now you’ve got your fundamentals, fine tuned. Right? You’ve kind of gone through and this an ever, you know, you want to be doing this all the time. You always want to be fine tuning the fundamentals, always be looking at the five areas and say, how can we improve this? How can we make it more efficient? How can we make it more profitable? Once you’ve got that going and like a nice rhythm and rotation of that happening consistently, then you’ve built your processes and become a process driven company, now you’re in a position where you can sit back and you’re going to look at your business in a whole different way; whole different way that you’re going to see it.
Now you ask yourself the question, do I need the scale? Right? No, we talk about scale and growth and getting to the next level and that’s all great, but the need to? And so for me, when I work with clients, the first thing I want to know is like, where do you want to get to in your life? How much money do you want to make? What’s it going to take to live the life you want to live because you know what? You might not need to open more offices based on what you want.
Maybe you want to make a certain amount of money, be able to live a nice lifestyle, right? Get things in order, so you’re not stressing out about is this happening? Is that happening? And you know everything’s running smooth. Maybe that’s where you want to be. You know, you don’t always have to scale and grow and open more, to live the life that you want to live. There’s a lot of money and profits right under your feet, where you are at. But, you may look at it and say, “Louis, I’ve got everything dialed in. You know, we’re operating at maximum efficiency and profitability and in order for me to live the life that I want to live for me and my family and do the things that we want to do, I need to be here and we can’t do that with this one location.” Then, you know, you need to scale, right? But you want to scale based on what you want to do in the way of how you want to live your life, right?
Don’t scale just for the sake of scaling. Because as much as it’s an entrepreneurial, like fire in you, to grow, it’s also something that you build that you also then have to maintain, that you also have to manage and if you’re not truly committed to it for a higher purpose and a higher reason, it can become very overwhelming.
So the last thing you want to do is just ask, do I need the scale? Where do I need to be, to be able to reach my personal financial goals? Because the number one thing you want to remember with all of this, whether you love the moving business, whether you hate the moving business. If you’re in the moving business, this business is your way to financial freedom and building wealth for yourself, but you’ve got to do it strategically and you don’t want to scale before you’re ready to scale.
Once you’ve got this setup, your fundamentals are fine-tuned, your processes are there, then you’re ready to go. Go crush it. Make it happen. I’ll see you guys next time.