How to Conquer Moving Season

One good summer could set you up financially, could set your business up to get to that next level. But you've got to be able to be. You've got to be prepared. You got to strike while the iron's hot. I know there were years where I didn't prepare myself for season. I kind of phoned in. I'm like, yeah, it'll be busy. There's nothing really to prepare for. The jobs are going to come in. It'll be fine. We'll figure it out. And you know what? I left a lot of money on the table and dealt with a lot of unnecessary problems that I didn't need to deal with this summer, man, you got to be ready. You got to be ready to go. And that's what I want to talk about today, because it makes all the difference. I don't even know if you realize what's about to happen this summer. You know, we've got a shortage in movers. We've got a shortage in moving companies that are going to be able to actually service all the moves that are going to happen this summer. And that means a lot of business, right? That means that, you know, hopefully you guys, man, you could rake it in this summer. Like, one good summer could set you up financially, could set your business up to get to that next level. But you've got to be able to be. You've got to be prepared. You got to strike while the iron's hot. You know, we can't treat it like any other time. We've got to look at it, and we've got to go. Okay, from May 15 to September 15, traditional moving season. Well, we've got. I wanted to get in here early this month. That's what these are all about. These are all about, like, guys, like, if you were all my partners in different cities running offices, these are the meetings that we would be having. Like, here's what we need to be focused on. Here's what we need to be doing. Here's how to go get more money, service your customers, live a better quality of life. That's what this is all about this summer. Man, you got to be ready. You got to be ready to go. That's what I want to talk about today, because it makes all the difference. I know there were years where I didn't prepare myself for season. I kind of phoned in. I'm like, yeah, it'll be busy. I don't. There's nothing really to prepare for. The jobs are going to come in. It'll be fine. We'll figure it out. And you know what? I left a lot of money on the table and dealt with a lot of unnecessary problems that I didn't need to deal with. So. So let's jump into it. First thing we've got to do, like, immediately right now, is we've got to put ourselves in a mission mindset. A mission mindset, meaning this summer, it's a mission. I am going on a mission. I need my team on a mission. I need my family to understand that I'm on a mission, and I need to get myself geared up and ready to be on a mission. And it's not about grinding it out, but you're on a mission. A mission will pull you forward. A mission of, hey, like, this is it. Like this. But you want to talk about, like, the iron being hot and striking while the iron's hot, like, this is it. I don't know that it's ever been hotter than this. 2021 season. All right, I know a lot of you are in different places. A lot of you been in the business for a long time. A lot of you, some of you are just getting started. But we've got to look at it, and we've got to change how we look at things. Maybe your daily habits need to change. Maybe your focus needs to change. Maybe the way that you're setting up, you know, your free time and all that, things need to change. Whatever that is for you, just understand, like, you've got 120 days of going on a mission. You guys ready for a mission? You guys. You guys ready to go on this? All right. It's just, to me, it's just like, if you don't flip that switch and tell yourself that, all of a sudden, it creates overwhelm. Like, oh, my God, we're so busy, we don't have enough movers. I don't know what to do. These customers were booked out three months in advance, and you get so busy, you start to even, like, give up. You're like, ah, we don't even have to try that hard. If they don't want to book, don't worry about it. And it's just, you know, you lose sight of what matters. When I started, I went on a real mission like we used to. I never turned down any work for the first couple years. And I learned the hard way that, like, that's not the way to do it, right? At some point, you've got to stop. But we just booked it and booked it and booked it, and we're, like, servicing people all night long at the end of the month in the summer, I slept at the office three, four, five nights in a row, right? But it was a mission. My team was on the mission with me, and we raked in a lot of money. Wasn't sustainable, Right? We had to kind of at some point, okay, we can't do this forever. Like, we've got to. We've got to know when we could cut things off. But you're gonna have customers coming in, right? There's gonna be no shortage of business this summer. So what, are we on a mission? We are on a mission to make as much money as possible and create as many raving fans as possible along the way, right? Like, I want you to think about getting out a rake, you know, like, it's time to rake it in. Like, go out there and start raking it in. And what are we raking in? Revenue and reviews. Revenue and reviews. That's it. If you just focus on those two things, okay, you'll maximize this summer. You've got to make as much money as possible, obviously running it with good margins. And get the reviews. People miss that one. Right? It's one thing to do a good job. It's another thing to proactively be getting those reviews from your customers. After every job, you should be asking them, how did we do? If they said, hey, you did a great job, you should be getting a review or even a video testimonial. Look, one summer can make you, but one summer could also break you. So if you're not focused on reviews and creating raving fans and doing a good job, and you're only focused on raking in revenue, you know how much, like, garbage you could leave behind you, how many bad reviews, how many pissed off customers, Right? You gotta have both. This has to be in balance. If we're only focused on revenue, not the reviews, well, guess what happens? Our online reputation suffers. Then our marketing cost is going to go up because it's going to cost us more money to get those jobs because people are going to check us out and then not go with us. It's going to be harder to convert. So your booking percentages go down. It all connects. It literally all connects. Revenue and reviews. Like, get a permanent marker, write it on your hand, whatever you got to do. Like, that's the mission, right? That's the mission for the next. For the summer, really? Okay, so now we know we're on a mission. We know what it is. We know we've got to get revenue and reviews. And one of the Biggest struggles everybody's having right now. So if you're having it, don't feel like you're alone or you're necessarily doing something wrong. Is labor right? Finding enough movers. And if you need movers now, you're gonna definitely need movers a month from now and two months from now. Right. So we've got to take a different approach. We gotta be mission driven for this summer. And when it comes to hiring, we've got a SWAT team. This thing. Like, don't take it lightly. Go in there like it's a SWAT team mission. Like, look, this is what's holding us back from getting all this money and all these reviews. Right. We need to SWAT team this thing. This means. Well, you've probably got to run more employment ads than you're used to running. Yes, I know they cost money. That's okay. Cost you more money to lose jobs that you're not getting because of movers. And I understand that it's harder out there right now, the climate that we're in. Look, you've got people that could go drive for Uber, they could drive for Amazon Prime. You have people sitting at home that were collecting money all last year to just kind of like, you know, I'm good, but you can't let. That's things that are happening. But the story that we're telling ourselves, if we keep saying there's no movers out there, I can't find them, I can't find them, I can't find them, then that's what's going to happen. We're going to give up. We're going to feel defeated. But I know from working with private clients, and they had the issue to say, look, here's what we've got to do. We've got a SWAT team, this thing, all hands on deck, hiring, and all of a sudden, with a month in, it's like they don't deal with that problem anymore. I've been saying it since I started doing this. In order to succeed at high levels, you've got to build a sales machine in your company to where you have consistent sales. Well, now you've also got to build a mover hiring machine. Right? And so again, you've got your placing ads, okay? You've got referrals. You tell all your guys, hey, if you know anybody, I'm going to pay you referral whether it's, you know, $100, whether it's $500, if the person stays for 90 days. Right. If you've got to go with labor services and you've got to go with labor services. If you've got to use the Facebook groups like Mover Syndicate or wherever else in a pinch, in order to get guys, yeah, I know they charge a couple hundred dollars a day, but you know, you don't want to make that your permanent crew. But in a pinch, you need to have it. You want to build your mover database. So mover database is like, they come in for an application, like, however their information comes across, keep it on a spreadsheet, okay? Because even though maybe they come to you today and they're like, hey, I need $20 an hour, and you're like, I pay 15. Well, there might come a day where you're willing to pay the 20 an hour. Whether it's for that one day or whether you finally realize you need to raise your prices in order to keep up with the demand of what it's costing to get movers. It's just, it's a SWAT team effort. Whoever's involved in placing the ads, place more ads. If you're putting ads on Craigslist, like, you need to put at least one a day. At least one a day, because they just start coming down, right? You want to start treating every application that you get from movers like it's a lead, right? When you buy leads, you get a lead. They go to five different companies, right? You compete with that lead. Well, if somebody's applying for a job, they're applying other places as well. You need them to fulfill your mission. Unless you're gonna single handedly go out there and service all these moves yourself and doing that forever, you need to get your mover hiring down. And I know I'm maybe making it sound extra simple, but that's because it is. It's just sometimes we just need more focus in an area that really matters as opposed to just we threw an ad and yeah, my dispatcher, he's taking the calls and you know, it's like, no, no, no. Like this is the most important thing, you know, if you're, if you've got business, if you've got business coming in and generating calls and leads and booking moves is not an issue right now. This is your most important thing. So my private clients that have gone in and said, hey, I'm making this a priority. I don't care where they are, how far they've stepped up, you know, stepped up the stairway to kind of move themselves out of the day to day. They go back into the day to day and say, you know what? I'm setting up our system for mover hiring, and we're going to solve this problem once and for all. It's harder now. Look, when I first started, I put a huge ad in the Yellow Pages. I literally sat with my feet up on the desk booking moves. It was like, you know, we had. Having a good pitch and having a good script was very helpful, but it wasn't as hard as, like, the competition today and moving leads and having to follow up and call people. But we adjusted, we adapted. So if we've got this mindset of, like, hey, it's so hard to get movers, and we don't just say, okay, yes. Is it harder than it used to be? Sure. But there's a lot of other things in your business, technology and other things that make it easier, you know, plus, you've got a community like this as well to help you. So is it harder than it used to be? Yes. Is it impossible? Absolutely not. Are the people who put in the effort going to succeed at high levels? 100%. Are the people that say it's too much work going to fail? I hope fail is not the word, but they're not going to get to that next level. And that's not you guys. That's not why you're here. Right. So I'm just. I'm spending extra time on this because I know it's an issue, and I know people tend, you know, as humans, we tend to want the magic bullet, right? We tend to want that, oh, I want to lose weight. What's the one pill I could take that's going to make me lose weight? You know, what's the. Whatever it is, it's putting focus and attention on the hiring process and having it be consistent and being okay that you get 100 applications, and out of the hundred applications, maybe you get four people on board. Then, you know, if you need eight people, guess what? You need 200 applications. Double the effort. Double the effort. There's a lot of components. People are like, I'm not getting any calls. I'm not getting any applications. You know, I had a private client who was like, I'm not getting any calls. Like, well, let me see the ad. Send me the ad. He sends me the ad. I'm looking at the ad. It's all caps. There's some exclamation points. And, you know, I'm like, you're yelling at people, man. Like, you know, you must have this, you know, And I'm not. I'm not making fun of him. I actually see him On a call but, and he knows. So like you know, it's, it's, you must have this qualification. Do not apply if this is very like whoa man, like, like take it easy, you know. So anyways, SWAT team hiring. You got to be on a mission right now. Secure your equipment, get your equipment secured. Now you're going to need trucks, you're going to need dollies, you're going to need pads, you're going to need straps. You might need a CRM. You know, some people might say, well I don't really have the time. Like getting your CRM dialed in before season will really help maintain order and structure in your business. And I know that it could seem like I don't have the time to do it right now, but sometimes in order to get something really working we gotta battle test it, you know. And like now's the time to really get that battle tested, get that dialed in. But more importantly your trucks, you've got to either buy, lease or secure long term rentals on trucks. And so you know, if you're in a position now like let me give you my outlook on when I would buy trucks. I, I would buy trucks. Whenever I felt like I was renting a truck every weekend I would buy a truck to replace that truck. So I was renting two trucks every weekend I would buy two trucks to replace those. Okay, because the money I was spending on the rentals versus and then the money I was paying on the trucks with depreciation plus the signage. To me that's where it worked out, right? I replaced those weekend rentals with buying a truck. So you know, buying a. I bought all my trucks brand new. Which right now might be hard to do before season because we ordered them, we had the boxes custom built so it takes time to do that. But you could buy used trucks. There's a site called usedmovingvans.com usedmovingvans.com you've also got you know, Penske and Ryder and all these places U Haul even they sell like their off lease trucks that you could get. But if you aren't going to buy or lease a truck, my recommendation would be to get yourself rental trucks and negotiate either month to month or like a three month or four month contract for the summer with whoever's around you, whether it's Penske, Enterprise, Ryder, you know, whoever, whoever you've got, you know, you listen, you try to go and rent a truck for the end of May, you know, Memorial Day weekend and you don't already have a pre existing Relationship with that truck rental place, you're going to have a really hard time finding a truck because you're competing against the other movers in town and you're competing against the consumers as well that are moving themselves. So always, whether it's summer or not summer, go establish a relationship with your truck rental vendors in your town. Okay? Whoever you've got, whoever you've got, go in there, meet them and get to know them. Because a lot of it is relationship based. If they like you and they want to look out for you, they'll, hey, save me two trucks for this end of the month. And they know you're going to come through on those two trucks for those short term rentals, you may be okay. But if you know you're gonna need trucks, I've got no problem renting trucks for the summer to get it done. If you can't find trucks to buy, I just want to prepare you that you might run up against no availability for rentals when you're just trying to like run and grab one for a Friday or run and grab one for a Saturday. And there's nothing wrong with renting trucks. You know, I always, always rented trucks. I started with two rentals, then started buying trucks, but then I would always use trucks, a rental trucks at the end of the month, Always in this, in the weekends, in the summer for sure. You know, because I didn't need them the rest of the time, right. So it helped me to fluctuate up and down with the demand, but have a process dialed in when you rent trucks. Okay, we need to go get the truck, we need to get the truck back so that we can load it up with equipment. We need to get it out when the truck goes back, we need to get it back. We need to unload the equipment and get it back to the rental place. You know, a lot of these high rental fees that a lot of you see on your P. Ls you're like, I'm just spending too much on rentals. It's because, number one, you could be getting charged for stuff that you're not, you're not using, right? Maybe not, but it happens, happened to me several times. Happened to a lot of people I know. And also, you know, the truck comes back Saturday night and nobody delivers the truck back to the rental place until Monday and you're getting charged for Sunday as well. Right. And an extra day on a bunch of trucks could be a lot. So like just dial in your process and be really conscious. Like when you get the truck Back when you pick it up and when you have a relationship with the truck rental place. You know, like we used to be able to say, hey, look, can we pick it up before you guys close tonight and, you know, not charge us till tomorrow? And I'm not saying anybody will do this for you, right? But again, that's where the relationship comes in. We're not gonna. Look, it'll be in our yard. You guys could come. Look, we're not, we're not gonna send out a truck at five o', clock, but we want to have it because you guys don't open till 7 and we dispatch at 6:30. So we would have it and, and then we would get it back to them on Saturday night. Or we would open communication and say, hey, look, do you guys need this back Saturday night? If not, we'll bring it back Sunday morning. And don't charge us for it. So it's just that open dialogue of understanding the pickup and drop off and loading equipment and how to make that whole process efficient will really help you remember we're on a mission. All right? This is the summer. You're here to rake in the money. You're here to get the reviews. This could really propel you. This summer could propel you to whatever your next level is. Wherever you're at now. I don't care if maybe you're just getting started. You're like, oh, okay, we're rocking now, right? You're already established. You want to go up another level or you're already established. Like, you know, many times at the end of the summer, like I was able to go buy like something major, like a new house or something like something like that, you know, like the summer could really set the tone for a lot. All right? Could really set the tone for a lot. So give yourself. I didn't really talk about that, but give yourself some kind of goal too. Have something ready to go for yourself at the end of the summer. Next thing is calendar based pricing. Okay? Calendar based pricing. And what that means is we've got to be able to look at our calendars in the places where you're permitted to do so. I know a few of you have like restrictions with tariffs and things like that, but we got to be able to look and go, okay, we know Memorial Day weekend is going to be slammed. We know the end of every month is going to be slammed, you know, especially if it falls. If the end of the month falls, like on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday is like the, you know, 30th, 31st and 1st, that's what's called a consolidated end of the month, which means everybody's trying to move within those few days. You could look at the calendar right now and determine what those days are and raise your prices for those days. Right? Like, if you're. Who's. Who's booked up for the next few weeks already? Who's booked up? Okay, we got to reverse the thought process and say it's not necessarily a good thing. Right? Because I probably could have charged much more money for those moves, and I still have plenty of time to continue to book. And if you've got any issue with charging more money, just remember all the movers that you want to hire that used to want 15 an hour, that now want 20 or 25 an hour. That's where the world is going, okay? Like, it's either you're going to do this as charity and be a servant to the community and do charity work by providing moves, or you're going to do this as a part of commerce, make money. And in commerce, prices go up. Right? It's the way the world works. And so in order for you to be able to pay for all your rate, your expenses that are going up, look, insurance, like, everything is going up, especially labor. Now, you know how much easier your mover hiring SWAT team process will be if you could afford to pay some more money for your movers. Do you know what better quality of movers you would get if you could pay more? Well, how do you pay for them? You raise your prices. So maybe it's not even just the end of the month and not even the weekend. Maybe you're due for an increase across the board every day. I can't tell you how many times I've done this with private clients where I, you know, like, look, I see where you're at. You're not making what you need to make. You need to raise the prices. You're booked out for weeks. Raise the prices. Everybody does it. Airlines do it. Hotels. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this unless you're like, hey, I'm in this for community service. Is anybody in this for community service? Like, you want to serve? I truly believe that what you're doing is a valuable, valuable business. And I want you guys to remember that, too. Like, you know, it's a hard thing. It's a stressful thing people go through. And for you to be able to come in and make it less stressful and make it easy and get their whole. Their whole life onto a truck and help deliver them to their new home, their new future, their new way of being, their new, you know, where their kids are going to be. It is serving. So just know you guys are not just in a business. It's just like, give me money, give me money. You're providing a service and that service really matters and you might not get the thank you, but when you do a great job, but you know that if they went with somebody else that didn't do a good job that their life would be somewhat negatively affected by that move. So don't feel bad about raising prices, get yourself into a position. By the way, make sure that you don't discuss pricing with other moving companies, okay? In other words, don't discuss pricing with movers in your market. There's laws against that. It's collective bargaining. You don't want to get involved with that. Okay? So if you need to know what the competition is charging, secret shop them, Just call them up, pretend like you're a mover, pretend like you're somebody that's moving, see what they're charging so that you could kind of see where you're at. Alright, so last thing, enlist your support squad, all right? You need to get people involved and they need to know that you're going on a mission. You're venturing out, you're going on a mission and you need the people in your life to understand that and ask for their support and be specific on what you could use from them, what you need from them. Alright, so you got mission mindset, focus on revenue and reviews. You want to SWAT team the hiring, secure your equipment, secure your trucks, calendar based pricing, make sure you guys are getting paid for the service that you do and enlist your support squad and make sure they're ready to go for you. Hey my friend, before you go, you've got to hurry and watch these next few videos over here. They will absolutely help you take your moving company to the next level. Go watch them now and I'll see you over there.