Avoid Hiring The WRONG Person In Your Moving Company

Louis Massaro warns moving-company owners to stop prioritizing industry experience and job-hoppers with short employment stints. Look instead for character and accountability. He shares a story about an estimator with an impressive resume who turned out to be unreliable, and stresses that willingness to hire-and-fire matters more than perfect credentials.
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Hey. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Luis Massaro, and we are live on Friday. I've got some good stuff here for you. Let me know. By the way, let me just make sure I'm not backwards here. Let's see. All right. Sometimes the cameras flip the other way. I just want to make sure I corrected that issue. So listen, I want to make sure that you are. Are avoiding hiring the wrong people, okay? By the way, before we get started, if you're interested in scaling your business, if you got some momentum and you already want to, you're ready to really take it to that next level and you want to work with me for the next year, go to talktolewis.com there's more information there on how you can work with me. And let's get into this because I want to talk to you about avoiding the wrong person. Everybody talks about, you know, they. They're looking to hire, which is a huge part of, you know, scaling your business, right? I mean, you can't do it all by yourself, right? It'd be pretty awesome if you could just clone yourself, right? If you could kind of, you know, if I was like, hey, guys, I got this machine and you can make clones of you and It'll cost you 50,000 a clone. You'd probably be like, sign me up, right? I'll pay whatever it is. I want to. I want to be able to do everything, but, you know, it's not possible. And in order to scale, you need to hire people. And sometimes, you know, we focus on hiring the right person. Right? But I want to get you to start thinking about how to avoid the wrong person, all right? Because, you know, a lot of times there's people out there that may seem like they are the right person for you. And I got some tips here that I want to make sure you're following. As you're coming into season and you might be taking on some new hires, maybe you need an ops manager, a new dispatcher, somebody to handle your books, new on site estimators, movers, whatever it might be. Anybody that you need to hire in your business. I want to make sure that you're handling it here because, you know, I'm going to tell you a really interesting story about this, by the way. If you guys listen, if you guys could hear me, if you could see me, if everything's good, just let me know. Just type a yes down below so I know I'm not sitting here talking to myself. This live thing has been a little, you know, finicky lately. And I just want to make sure that, you know, we're good and we're, we're here and we're ready to go. And for those of you I've seen a few people just jumped on. If you want to work with me for the next year, I'm taking on a couple more people for this year's group. To work with me personally, just go to talktolewis.com that's talktolewis.com you could apply and get all the information there. Thank you, Lazar. Thanks for the information. Artem. What's up, Ted? Good to see you, Ted. All right, so interesting story, right? I'm working with one of my private clients and he gets super excited. We have our, you know, our regular call, and he's like, look, I'm super excited. I've got this guy that I want to hire. He's got years of experience. He's, you know, he's this, he's that. He worked for this van line. He's worked for that van line. He's worked for this van line and that van line and this company and that company. And right away, I already knew in my mind. I try not to judge things too quick, but I said, you know what this is? You know, this sounds like a little bit of a red flag. So I said, all right, let's talk about it. I said, you know, show me his resume. You got his resume there? Okay, do a screen share. Show me the resume. So we're looking at his resume and yeah, no doubt about it. It's like, wow. You look at it on the surface, it's like, man, he was, you know, he handled this position for this, you know, big agency and this other big agency, like, well respected companies, right? Like companies that you're like, you know, wow. And my client has a very, very good sized company, but he's an independent company. And sometimes as you know, an independent company coming into the business. And I say this because I went through the same thing myself. We look at people that come to us with experience as if they're kind of like the savior, right? We're like, oh, wow, this guy's got all this experience. He worked at all these big companies. He's going to be able to come in and show me what, what they did at all these big companies. And so I saw the same thing happening to my client at this time during this call that I went through, you know, a few times, actually. It took me a while to learn this lesson, to realize, you know, What? Just because someone's kind of like been all over the place and they have all this, you know, experience, doesn't really mean that they're the right fit. And a lot of times it's something that you really, really want to avoid. All right, so, you know, I've got these points here. I definitely want to walk you through them. But what ended up happening is we pulled up his resume, we went through it, and we could see right away, we're like, okay, he was at this place for eight months, right? He was at this place for 11 months. He was at this place for whatever it was, short, short periods of time. There was like six, seven, eight companies that he worked at. Like, all good names, right? All good companies. Like, right away I knew who the companies were. I was like, oh, that's great. But he wasn't there long. So what does that tell you, right? If he's going from place to place to place. And again, this happened to be an on site estimator, right? Someone to go do on sites. But this could be for any position, right? And you know, what does that really tell you? If the guy's going from one spot to the next spot to the next spot, he's got enough charm, he's got enough smooth talk, he's got enough credentials on his resume where they go, wow, okay, let's hire him. But what's happening when he gets there? Why is he not sticking around, right? And what you'll typically find is, you'll typically find when you do the interviews, and I'm going to talk to you about that in a second. When you do the interviews, it will typically be that they're not really taking any responsibility for what it was, right? They're pointing the finger like, hey, you know, it was them, it was them. But what are you going to. I mean, when you look at that, and he's been to all these different places and is it gonna be that all those different places that there's something wrong with the way they're doing things, or is there something wrong with his ability to be a good employee? Cause experience doesn't always translate into being a good employee, right? If anybody's ever had this issue, let me know down below. If you've ever hired somebody that looked like they were the greatest thing to your business ever on paper, and then you brought them in, let me know down below, just give me a thumbs up, give me a yes, whatever you got, tell me the story, whatever it is. But by the way, before I, you know, I see some more People joining. I am accepting two more people into a group that I work with tightly for a year to help you specifically grow and scale your business. If you're interested in that, go to talktolewis.com all the information's there. But let me tell you some tips, Let me give you some tips on how to handle this. All right, so some of the things that we want to avoid is, you know, first thing you want to remember when you're looking at any resumes, when you're doing any interviews, when you're talking to anybody about any position, don't put experience on a pedestal. What does that mean? Don't put experience on a pedestal. Don't just, you know, take them and because they, they worked at this van line and this big company and maybe they own their own moving company at one point, don't automatically take them and put them on this pedestal like they're worth of some position, right? I see it happen a lot. I did it a lot at the beginning. And when I started, I was young, I was, you know, I started hiring people. I was like in my early, early 20s, 20, 21, 22, I started hiring people, started expanding, you know, had six offices by 23. And it was like I was hiring a lot of people. And every time I came across one of these individuals, I got all excited like, oh, and I put them on a pedestal because I thought they were gonna really bring a lot to the business. Right? And what I could tell you is, listen, experience in the industry is great, but it doesn't overcome the person themselves, right? So you have to make sure that that experience isn't overshadowed by bad habits. It isn't overshadowed by their inability to work well within your organization the way that you do things, right? So you want to make sure that you don't put experience on a pedestal. It's a good thing. I'm not saying knock them away and don't accept the interview and don't set up, you know, possibly hire them because they have experience. What I'm saying is don't let that be the end all be. All right, so next one is avoid job hoppers, alright? Avoid job hoppers. So you know, a job hoppers, like we just discussed with that example I was giving you with my client, which was, you know, again, guy had tons of experience, but he was here for eight months, he was there for a year, right? And you might say, yeah, but Louis, I need somebody now. And even if he's only here for eight months, it's still going to fill that void. You know, there's a lot of time, money, and energy that goes into hiring somebody and bringing them on, right? And not only is there a lot of time, money, and energy that goes into bringing them on, but you also have that. What does it do to everybody else in your business that's watching, right? When you bring somebody in and you. You bring somebody into your company that doesn't follow your processes, right? That is essentially, like, totally disobedient to the. To the rules and the processes and the way that you want things done. And so when you have someone and you could clearly see on their interview that they're a job hopper, which you could. It's the first thing I look at, by the way. Like when I look at an interview, a resume, right? Which I don't do for sales, by the way. I don't look at resumes for sales. You guys, if you've heard me before, I start off, I just want to hear how they sound on the phone. But the first thing you need to do for any other position is you need to look at the resume. And if you avoid the job hoppers by just looking at how long they've been at each position, and if they don't list that, you need to ask them, because they know, right? They know people are looking out for that. And if they've been at places for such a short time, that's a red flag. Doesn't mean they won't work. They might still pass some other points in the interview process and still be a good fit for your company. But I just wanted to give you three things today to watch out for as we start getting busier, as we get closer to season. As I hear a lot of people asking Louis, how do I find good help? I want to make sure that you don't get overly excited about someone that looks really good on paper but is going to end up being a problem for you. All right, so the last tip for this particular point is watch out for the finger pointers, right? You want to watch out for the finger pointers. And what that means is, you know, when you're doing your interviews, you definitely want to ask questions. You know, those of you that are in any of my programs and you have my interview scripts, you. You know that it's about asking questions to really discover who they are, right? You ask them kind of questions in one way, and you kind of ask them the same questions in another way, and you're kind of. You're taking notes as you're doing this. But what you're really trying to do is you're trying to see in some of these questions if they take responsibility for things that happen at other companies. So you're asking them things like, you know, tell me about a situation that happened at your last position, and you could pick one maybe off the resume. If it's not the last position, tell me about a situation that, you know, where things didn't go according to company protocol and how did you handle that? Right. And let them talk. Right? Let them, like, shut up and let them talk. Right. You know, a lot of times when you let someone talk, they'll talk themselves right out of something. Right? And so if you just listen and you ask them more than one of these types of questions, right, to see if they have personal accountability, to see if they take any type of responsibility for anything that happens, and if all they do on all those different questions is go, it was them. It was them. Yeah. You know, that manager, I didn't like the way they did things. No. The way this company. They were doing things, they were doing things wrong. I didn't agree with it. That manager had a problem. If everything is them pointing at somebody else, what do you think is going to happen? They're going to come to you, and they're going to have a problem with the way you do things, and chances are it's going to be because you have a problem with the way they're doing things. And that's just their way of being defensive. So, listen, I hope that helps. Let's see who we got here today. We got Ted. What's up, Ted? What's up, Artem? Lazar. Long time. Lazar. What's up, Damien? Good to see you. All right, Tommy. James, what's up, James? James. What's happening, my man? All right, listen. Artem says skills can be taught. Character. You either have or you don't have. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right? You know, you hire somebody that's a good person and you teach them how to do this stuff, right? I mean, it's not hard to teach someone how to do. You know, here's where the gap lies, right? The gap lies when there's a lack of process, right? When there's a lack of process, we look for these experienced people to come in and be the savior. We look for them to come in and kind of show us how things were done somewhere else. And that's not what you want because your company will constantly be, you know, taking the roller coaster of each and every individual and their personalities and their ups and downs that comes in and out of the company. What you want is you want to have the processes in place. You want to know the roles that you need to fulfill, right? And then find the right person for those roles and give them the process and let them run with that. But, you know, a lot of times we get somebody like this, right? Where they have all this experience and we put them on a pedestal, right? And now we start looking to create a position for them, right? We don't even have something like, we have what they have, all this experience. I need to find something for them. And we let that take us off track of what our mission is, what our goal is, what our objectives are, right? I mean, this is something that we work on specifically in my flagship program with the group that I work with for years, you know, creating that blueprint, creating those systems, creating that freedom by hiring the right people so you can actually sell scale. You know, I don't have a number to put on it. I haven't done the research. But I can tell you it's very, very, very costly to bring in the wrong people and go through that whole thing. It's not only costly in the time that it takes you to train and hire and get them into the position and then have to replace them when they leave, but the damage that it does to the morale of everyone else within the company. All right, so listen, if you've been burnt in a situation like this in the past, if you're, you know, needing to make some hires, sometimes you just got to go through it sometimes, you know, you can't be afraid to hire and fire, hire and fire. You know, you hire somebody, you don't make the right decision, and you need to let them go. So be it, Right? So be it. Don't be afraid to hire because of some of these things. You know, just. You gotta try it, right? This is years of me just doing this with no. No idea what I was doing. Right? My interviews used to be, like, when I first started, they used to be like, oh, here's what we have. Here's our job. Like that. Does that sound good? Something you're willing to do? Great. When could you start? Right? And what I realized is that it's not a matter of, like, are they willing to do the job for me, it's more about, are they capable of doing the job that I have that I need them to do, right? And that's really what you want to look for. What's we got, Al? What's up, Al? I hope I'm saying that right. There's a difference between how you hire an office representative and how you hire a mover. Absolutely. Right, Absolutely. You know, you know, you want your movers, you want to make sure that they're number one. They're, they're responsible enough to be there every day when you need them to be there, right? Which, that you'll only be able to find out once you get them going. You want to make sure they're willing to do the work. You want to make sure that they are, you know, doing what is asked of them on a day to day basis and they're willing to follow the company procedures for how you want them to approach your customers. Everything throughout the move. We'll talk about that in another, you know, another live I'll do, but. And that they could actually, you know, move the furniture. But then the movers as well, you can train them to do the actual moving if they're a good person, if they're a good employee. But it is the same thing where, you know, again with movers, watch out for the finger pointers, right? Why'd you leave that company? Oh, they were doing this. Oh, they were doing that. Avoid the job hoppers, right? They've worked at every moving company in town. What's the problem there? You know, listen, if they, if they're a veteran and they've been in the business for, you know, however many years, and they were here for five years and they were here for cool, that's fine, right? But if they were like here for six months and then here for three months and then here for nine months, that, that's a problem, right? If you need, you know, if you need someone to fill some seats and get, you know, on the schedule in the summertime, right, you're like, hey, cool, I could use some extra help in the summer, that's fine, right? But these are just things you want to look out for, mostly for office staff, but they still apply to movers as well. You know, don't put the experience on a pedestal, right? I don't care. I never really cared like, you know, you worked at all these companies. Unless I know those companies are training people the right way, it really doesn't mean much. Right, guys, thanks so much for interacting. Thank all of you for being here. I will see you soon. Go out there every single day, profit in your business and thrive in your life. Have a great weekend, guys. I'll talk to you soon.










