How to Win in the Moving Business
Louis Massaro responds to a 22-year mover who says the industry has collapsed. To win now you need three things: tracked internet marketing, a sales team that converts leads, and a repeatable hiring process. Massaro built a call center with 60-70 reps over 11 years and says the movers complaining about Yelp and SEO are stuck in a fixed mindset.
Foreign.
It's Luis Massaro. And welcome to another episode of the Moving Mastery Podcast.
All right, my friend, welcome to the Moving Mastery Podcast. This is Louis Massaro. I got my main man Chris with me today. What's going on?
What's up?
All right, so it's in these episodes. It is all about helping you take your moving company to that next level, eliminate the stress, you know, overcome any challenges, any obstacles that you're having, make more money, be able to spend more time with your family, create a model business, and just let this business that you're in be the vehicle to the life that you want to live. Right?
Yes.
That's what we're trying to do. So in these episodes, what we're doing is we're taking questions from my social media feed. If you are following me on any platform, it's LewisMassaro.com that's L O U I S M A S S A R O. If you have any questions, anything you want us to tackle on the Moving Mastery Podcast, just DM me on Instagram and Chris randomly pulls some out and. Well, I wouldn't say randomly. He's not picking them out of a hat. You're. You're hand selecting them because as the, you know, producer of the podcast, essentially.
Yep.
You're kind of running the show. I'm just here to answer whatever the question is. Yeah.
I'd like to go through the comments, the questions, the things that come into our support desk and find stuff that I think that maybe a lot of people may be wondering about and stuff that I feel like you can shed some light on and bring some value to these people who are listeners and stuff.
Yeah. What do we got?
So today I'm going to throw a little bit of a curveball at you today. I mentioned earlier that it's. It's a comment this time. It's not necessarily a question, but I wanted to kind of lay this on you and see how you feel about it. But I have a feeling that there may be, you know, maybe not a lot, but some people who. Who share this gentleman's sentiments. Okay. And I don't know anything about him. I didn't follow up with this. It's just a comment that was. That was on one of our social media outlets. So I'll read it to you, and then I just want to hear how you feel about it.
All right.
Okay.
The comment is, I've been in the business for 22 years, and I can tell you everything has gone to shit.
He says Internet marketing is a Joke. Guys don't want to work, Yelp takes down all my good reviews.
Oh, boy.
I'm not so sure it's all as easy as you make it out to be. Get real, buddy.
That's what he said. Really? Yeah. So, you know, hey, listen, there's some truth behind that. There's some, you know, heartfelt sentiment behind that. I feel like, you know, I'm not. I don't want to make fun of the guy. He's having maybe some.
I'm not making fun of the guy. I'm just. I'm in shock a little bit. I wasn't expecting that. All right, so hold on. Let me just make sure I got this right. 22 years in the business, business has gone to shit. Guys don't want to work, Yelp reviews come down. What?
El, he says, I'm not so sure it's. It's as easy as you make it out to be. Get real, buddy.
Okay.
All right, Give me a minute. This is. Yeah.
This is a good one.
It's a good one. Right? Well, you know.
But you know what? Here's the deal. I think that 22 years. So I would have been. I started 20 years ago. Yep. So this. He's probably in business since 98.
That's 22 years.
So.
98 to now, things have definitely changed.
Yeah.
There's no doubt about it. Right? 98 till now. Let's just say 2000 till now, because that's when I got in.
Okay.
Two years after. After he got in. So things have definitely changed.
You know, gone to shit. No. Guys don't want to work. It's a challenge. Right. Yelp reviews coming in. Yelp didn't exist 20 years ago. Right. Not so easy. I don't know that I've ever sat here and said that this is easy.
Yeah.
At all.
Yeah.
Right. All the time. Like, this is not a get rich quick business.
Definitely not.
It's a great business that if you do it right, you can make a lot of money. Right. But here's the deal, because I do see this a lot with.
With veterans. Not veterans of the. Of our country, but veterans in the business. Right. People that have been in the business for a long time.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Is that there's. There's a few, you know, a couple different groups. Right. There's this guy sounds like he just hasn't made the shift to the new way of doing things.
Right.
And there's been a few dramatic shifts. Did he say something about everything on the Internet or Internet marketing or.
He said Internet marketing is a joke.
Yeah. So, you know, let's just kind of look at that because, you know, in order to. In order to win today in this day and age. Yeah, right. In order to win in 2020. Because we know there's companies crushing it purely.
Yes. We see them every day.
And then there's. There's other people that are. They believe it's possible, but they still haven't found the way to do it. And then there's people that have seen it just get. I shouldn't say harder, but it just has changed the way that it's adjusted from back then.
Right.
I mean, you know, when I started, I put the yellow page ad in. Right. Sat back my feet up on the desk. Once I had a desk once I moved out of the truck rental yard and just, you know, phone rang and booked moves.
Yeah. Different game back then.
Different game. And then. So, you know, 2000, you know, seven, 2008.
You know, there's like the perfect storm, Right.
The economy.
Yellow pages stops working.
You know, that traditional. Not. I shouldn't say stops. The, The. For the money you're paying. The. It's not worth it anymore. For.
For a while, though. Just real quick, how many different yellow page books were you in at one time? Didn't you have, like, a bunch of them?
Man, Every city you were in. Yeah, I had six offices. So every. Every city you were in, there was. I mean, there was like the main book from the main phone company.
Yeah.
Right. Then there was. I don't want to name any of them because I don't.
Yeah.
Who knows?
Yeah.
But then there was like another phone provider.
Another.
There was another yellow page provider. Right. There was like at least two to three major providers in each city. Yeah. And then they all started coming out with different, like, oh, we have this area book.
Right.
For the, for the south side of town and, oh, the east side, they have an area book. I'm like, don't they get the main book? Yeah, but we also want to give them this little book.
Yeah.
So that they, you know, it's. It was just a way to get.
Oh, I remember I had a stack of them.
It was just a way to get more money out of you. So total spending 250,000amonth on yellow pages at the peak. So anyways, when that stopped working. Right. And so I'm telling this story because I want to illustrate how to adapt. Right. We're talking about this guy, and I. And I know a lot of people feel that way. Maybe not with such a. Such A negative tone to it. You know? You know, they feel like maybe it was easier back then. It would have been very easy for me to argue, you know, oh, man, it's these Internet leads and. And this and that and all this stuff online. It's whatever. And just complain about it. But the reality was I saw that that's where things were going, and I had to make that shift and I had to make that adjustment. So instead of fighting it, like a lot of people did. Right. I jumped in and I learned. Right. What? SEO, pay per click leads, just Internet marketing in general. Right. All of that. How do I make part of me operating my business as I need phone calls, I need leads, I need people that are moving. How do I continue to get those? Yeah, Right. So you're talking about that timeframe there, like 2007, 2008, and even before that, you know, leads were coming out. There was stuff going on, but I didn't really make that adjustment until around that time. But the reality is that, you know, a lot of people that didn't make it through the recession.
Yeah.
It wasn't that the recession did it to them. It was that they didn't make the adjustment that they needed to make in the way that they handled marketing. Mm. And continued to spend money in areas that were no longer working and I shouldn't say refused, but did not adapt and learn the new ways of generating leads for their business.
Yeah.
And so here we are, 22 years later, and he says, you know, the Internet marketing is terrible. I think the Internet marketing is an amazing thing for companies out there. Your. Your flexibility that you have now compared to then. Yeah, it was great. You put a yellow page on it. It was easy. Meaning there was less steps involved.
Yeah.
But you also had less control where now you're able to tweak, you're able to modify, you're able to, you know, really track everything and. And you can make changes, you know, quickly.
Right.
You're not stuck with something for an entire year. You want to open a new market. You don't have to wait for the yellow pages to come out. Right. You go open whenever you want to go open and. And start your marketing. Right. So for me, I had to make that shift.
Or I wouldn't have been able to stay in business. Right. With the marketing then it was okay. I'm getting all these Internet leads. Right. And I was like, even stuff, pay per click, whatever, any. Anything that wasn't a phone call. Phone calls are gold. Even today, your phone rings. Don't ever Miss that.
That's right.
Don't ever miss that. And. But, you know, how do we. We used to print them off on the printer, right? The leads used to come and walk around and like, hand out pieces of paper. Wow. Back then, that was when the leads first started. Like, there was no CRM with the leads coming directly into them and all that. It was, here's the leads. Hey, call this. And they would write on there what, you know, what they, like, they did their whole lead follow up on the sheet of paper that we printed out. Wow. And so this was now starting to get out of control. And so I had to shift again, Right. And adapt again to the times. I'm like, okay, what do I need to do to make sure that these leads aren't getting lost? What do I need to do where I walk up to a, you know, moving consultant's desk and I see a stack of these leads with like, handwritten notes, coffee stains, you know, all kind like, it just wasn't organized at all. And that's when, you know, I went from studying marketing and learning that to studying call centers. Right. Studying sales. How other industries, you know, basically handled this type of stuff. Because I'm like, I didn't sit there and say, oh, you know, this is terrible. The good old days used to be on the phone. And, you know, believe me, there was part of me that was. That was resistant to it, but I knew I had to adapt and I had to change. And I'm saying this because it sounds like he, he's. For a long, long time, he's resisted making the adjustments that need to get made. So it was like, first you got to learn. Internet marketing is here to stay, period. When somebody wants a service, they go online, they look for it. You've got to learn how to be at the end of every path that they choose. Meaning customer goes on computer, they Google movers. In my city, let's just say, well, everything that shows up, you want to make sure that you're on the end of every single one of those paths.
I see.
So if it's like your site directly, you get the lead. If it's a lead provider, you get the lead. Right. Then you need to make sure that it's all profitable. Right. We won't necessarily get into that too deep right now, but. So that was the first piece, the marketing, but then the sales piece. Like, how do you start to. For me, the leads came out once. I had five offices already.
Okay.
And so I had a good handful of, of, you know, I think at first, maybe like 15 reps approximately. Okay. In those early days. And how do I make sure that the money that I'm spending on the marketing is not going to waste? Right.
Well, first of all, let's back up. For a guy in this situation, let's just say he's never bought leads before. He's never been in that situation.
Just so you know, when I say leads.
Yeah.
I'm talking about any form of market. So it could be from your website, it could be, you know, modern day, it could be from Yelp.
I see. Okay.
So when I say leads, I don't necessarily only mean moving leads from moving lead.
Gotcha. Okay.
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
Well, you know, it's. It's even just going from being an old school, you know, phone book only. Maybe they'll put out a few little flyers or something, you know, to. To getting like a structured, you know, lead management process or anything like that. Like, how does that even happen? Like, you had to make that transition. Was it something that you were able to do quickly or is it like a process takes time? Like, how did it go?
I opened my call center for. So my offices all had sep. They all handled their sales.
Yeah.
Individually. And one office was doing great, another office wasn't. So I'm like, I need a centralized call center. I opened that in 2004 or 5. I can't remember correctly exactly, but.
And then, you know, for 11 years, I built my call center to point. We had 60, 70 reps on the phone booking nationwide. And.
That 11 years was all perfecting that process. Wow. Right? Lead comes in. How. When do we call it? How many times do we call it back? What's the approach? What forms of communication do we call them on if this rep's not there, what do we do with that lead? If a phone call comes in, how do we route that phone call? What are we saying to every one of the customers based on if it's a local or long distance job? Right. If they say they're not ready to move, what do we say about that? To get. And it was. All of it was all to just increase that booking percentage.
Yeah.
Right. You got, you got X amount of leads. How do we book more of them? How do we book more of them?
Just incrementally, one little decimal point at a time, like.
Yeah. So I would say over the course of 11 years, I feel like I came pretty close to perfecting a system for, you know, what I call a sales machine for the moving business.
Yeah.
And, you know so that was like the second big shift, right. It was like, you know, you gotta get the marketing right, shift your way from the old ways to the new way. Then you've gotta build a sales machine. I mean, anybody, anybody that's, you know, been following me for any amount of time knows like that's the main thing that I go after is like, you've got to build a sales machine. Otherwise, doesn't matter how good your crews are, doesn't matter how great your trucks look, doesn't matter how many people you have in your office, if you don't have consistent moves being put on the board and they're high paying jobs that you're not just discounting.
Yeah.
You're gonna have a really hard, really hard time.
Sounds like kind of maybe that might be what this guy's going through. He's just not having consistency.
Well, it sounds like he hasn't adapted to the marketing.
Yeah.
Right. And, and listen, I don't want to out this guy.
No.
Because it's hard to learn all this stuff when you're, you're, you know, I remember, I'm like in the moving, in the moving business, everything is great. Right. I've got, you know, five offices, you know, making money. Yeah. I'm not thinking about marketing because the phone just rings.
Yeah.
On the yellow pages. I'm like, hey, I'm, you know, back then, it's like if you had to, you know, you had the balls to put the, put the money up for the yellow page ad and you had the, the ability to sell. See, I had the ability to sell from day one.
Yeah.
Those were sales tactics. I just didn't have the sales systems down. Right. But if you had that ability to do it, then you were good. But now when, when that stops working, it's panic mode. And what a lot of people do in panic mode is they, they, they retreat. Right. They're, they're. And it's, it's not a test to anybody's character or, you know, him or anybody else. But it could be scary. I mean, to be in a business where like all this time you've known things to work a certain way and all of a sudden they're totally different. I remember the feeling.
Yeah.
It wasn't like at first, I'm like, yeah, no problem. I'm gonna go learn. Like, it wasn't, it took a while. It took, you know, a lot of denial of what was happening, what was going on, and, oh, that, that's not gonna last. To finally saying, you know, what if I don't. If I don't learn this, if I don't get on top of this now, I'm gonna be in a really, really bad spot. Right. And it's true. I mean, if you're, if you're not.
You know, if you're not dialed in on your Internet marketing.
Yeah.
You're gonna. And your marketing in general, you're gonna be in a really bad position. And I tell people all the time, like, you as the moving company owner, need to be the best marketer in your business. Right. Right. Don't hire an agency and expect them to come in and, you know, if you need them to do specific things for you, technical, pay per click, SEO type things, great. But you don't need some big branding agency to come in and brand your business. You just need to learn what it is about the marketing. Right. Same thing with the sales. But now in this, you know, in 2020, we've got a new obstacle.
What's that?
Well, now, you know, there was, hey, you've got to learn Internet marketing. You've got to get on top of that. Okay. Then you've got to create your sales machine. Both of these still are true today. So whoever doesn't have, you know, before I get into, like, the challenge today, in 2020, you still got to have your marketing on point. You still have to have a strong sales process. But now there's another piece which is your ability to hire and train movers quickly. Right.
That's a lot of what he said there was, was, you know, guys don't want to work.
It's true. You know, guys don't want to work. It's. Listen, we. I'm not sugarcoating anything. The reality is it's a different generation. It's a different type of, you know, they don't want to go and lift, you know, move furniture for a living. It's not. It's different than it. There's a lot of other opportunities, or at least perceived opportunities.
Yeah.
In this social media world that we're in where everybody's like, hey, do this. You can make a bunch of money online, or, no, guys could go work for Uber or whatever the case may be, there's no doubt that there is a shortage of drivers, that there is a challenge in getting movers. However.
The people that have this process down for hiring are winning and they're winning big. Right, Right. So what I mean by that is it's easy to sit here and say, oh, you know, it's so hard to hire movers. These Days, they don't want to work. They go and work here. They want more money. It's just so hard. It's so hard. And it's easy to get caught up in that mindset. It's easy for an owner to listen to his dispatcher that's in charge of hiring and bringing movers on board and getting them into the rotation, telling him how hard it is, and it just starts to infect everybody. I'm not saying that there's not truth to the fact that it's harder to do. Okay. What I'm saying is this is the reality. So either get good at it or get out of the business. Yeah.
You got to adapt.
You got to adapt. And the people that are adapting are crushing it. Right, right. So it's like, you know, I talk to a lot of people. We talk to a lot of people. We hear a lot from what's going on. We've got. I've got, you know, good amount of private clients that I work with directly in their business. And the ones that they've got their marketing on point. They know their numbers in their marketing, their test, and they're tracking, they're tweaking, They've got their sales machine going. And now they've added this piece of. Of, you know, hiring movers and not complaining about how hard it is, but just doing the additional work that it takes to make it happen. They're winning.
They're winning.
They're making a lot of money. They're expanding, they're opening additional locations, and they're not worried about that.
Yeah.
If we take a step back. If we just take a step back and we say, okay, what's this all about? Forget about 22 years ago, forget about today. Right. It's a moving business.
Yeah.
What do people want? They want to hire a professional moving company. Okay. So as a professional moving company, what do I need to do.
To get that job and be in front of them and be successful? I've got to be able to generate leads and book moves. Step one, your sales machine.
Yep.
And you've got to be able to service those moves by hiring movers and obviously having trucks and dispatch and all that. But it's like you get. You got your sales going.
Yeah.
And you're constantly able to book moves, and you've got your hiring process going for movers, and you've got that. Everything else is just, you know, there's details in between, but those are the two main things. Book the move service to move. Book the move service to move. So yes, it's different today, but I would. Man, Anybody who's sitting and thinking about this, like, the moving business is tough in 2020 or it's different than it was 22 years ago.
What we tend to do as humans is when we don't understand something, we start to reject it or we start to fear it, or we realize that we need to learn more about it and we go right after it. And so I think for the people that want to just say the moving business is like, he says, gone to shit, or.
You know, it's not so easy. Guys don't want to work. There's all kinds of reasons that people can complain about what it is. Right.
But there's also strategies that, that aren't that hard that will solve all these problems. It's, it's all, it's all perception. Right, right, right. This guy, I, you get this guy, he comes at a seminar and we sit him next to, you know, someone that we know is, has a totally different perception.
Yeah.
And they talk for three days. It's going to be, you know, change everything. It'll change everything. Yeah. I'm not like, I'm not selling anybody a dream. Like, this is, this, this is hard work.
Right.
This is not.
But, but, but here's the difference between just like, doing the work and then trying to go figure out a way.
Yeah, right.
I mean, that's why I'm doing this. Like, I know, I know it's challenging. So I'm saying, like, hey, let me avoid, let me help you avoid all these, like, rabbit holes that you could go down looking for solutions and just lay out a plan for you. Right. And this, and, and this is, you know, on a macro level, like, this is what's needed. You've got to book moves. You've got a service moves. It's really, it's really that. And then everything else in between is just details that, you know, we lay out in, in courses and seminars and all that.
But, yeah, now there's nothing wrong with, with somebody who has gotten to a certain level in their company and they're just, they're cruising along and, and they're comfortable and they're happy with the way things are going. And I, I think maybe, you know, a guy like this has been in the business for 22 years. At some point he did have to do some work to get off the ground, I would imagine. And then maybe he just got to a certain level where he felt like business is good. He didn't maybe didn't want much more Than, you know, what they were doing is, is it okay? Does somebody have to have that go get him attitude? And. And I mean, like, where is his bitterness coming from? That's what I want to know. Like, he must have his.
His bitterness is coming because his business is probably going down.
Yeah.
Right. I'm not going to say failing, but it's going down.
Yeah.
And, you know, I. I could totally understand this, and I know quite a few people like this that, you know, you. And it's. It's a natural tendency, too. Like, we just, you know, you build a business, you get it to a certain place, and then everything you like, you set up everything. So it's just like you got your little routine going, right?
Yeah.
Jobs are being booked, guys are being. We're servicing the moves. Everything's fine. So he probably had a good amount of years where he thought he was done innovating. He thought he was done trying to make things better. He got to a place, I'm assuming. But in my mind, I'm thinking of several people that I know that went through this same thing, right. They. They get to a place where they're like, I'm good, I'm comfortable. I've got a business, it runs, it makes the money that I wanted to make. Yeah, sure. I could always make more money. And then all of a sudden, you know, enemy fire starts coming in at you, right. It's like, boom, this stops working. Oh. Now there's these. There's these lead, you know, review sites online, and, you know, if you don't have a good review, then you're not going to get the business. Oh. And then when you get a good review, they take down your good review. Right. So this is like, this. You got to understand, like, from being in a nice, cushy place of things are going good, it's like. It's like enemy fire coming at you. Yeah, Right. Like you're being attacked.
You feel threatened.
You feel threatened.
Yeah.
And, you know, many years of being comfortable, it's. It's tough to, like, say, let me go do this all over again.
Yeah.
You know, because when you. When you succeed at that. At that first level of saying, hey, I just need to get my business off the ground. Right. And you get to that level where it's good and it's stabilized.
And then you kind of sit back a little bit, you're like, all right, I don't have to, you know, I don't have to work like I used to work. And then something comes in and. And kind of Challenges you that to have to do that again and then. But it's not. It's not. Something's coming in saying, hey, I'm challenging you to do this. It's saying, hey, your business is failing.
Yeah.
There's these things out there that could be the possible culprits of what's going on. Go figure out what's happening.
And you don't know.
And you don't know. Like, that's. I mean, I. I get it. Like, you know, I'm so. I. I'm. What I did. I don't. Maybe I don't get into detail enough about how challenging it was to make those shifts. It's not like I was like, oh, yeah, one day, yeah, I decided I need to learn marketing. And I just went and did that. Right. I went through all the same stuff of, like, man, you know, I was living really, really, really good before that recession came. And then I had to really change the way I looked at everything.
So.
Yeah, I just. Anybody that's in that position that. That's comfortable, you know, right now, things have been booming. I think that you've always got to be looking for, you know what?
First of all, if you know your numbers, you see things dropping, you've got to be able to identify what it is. Right. And I know the feeling, right. When you've got a successful business, success can totally be the enemy.
Yeah. It makes you.
Makes you relax. It makes you relax. It makes you sit back and, you know, not that you don't need to go, oh, I'm successful, or I'm stressful. Right. It doesn't need to be one or the other. You just have to be aware. Right. You've got to be aware of what's going on and a long run of success for somebody doing something the same way. It's. What do you. I mean, you have two choices. You could sit and complain and go, oh, these. These Internet stuff's going on, and the guys don't want to work. I mean, I'm just. You got. You got two ways to do it. Or you can say, okay, what can I do about it? How can I step up my game and use this as a challenge to become better? Yeah, how can I do this? Because, you know what, if you're struggling with it, other people are struggling with it. He's probably has something to say about all the competition, too.
Yeah.
Right. But if you're struggling with it, other people are struggling with it, and so that's the perfect time for you to step up your game. And make sure that you will survive whatever comes your way. Right.
If someone is, is, has been running a company for, you know, 22 years like he has, and, and things have been just on autopilot, basically.
How would somebody like that go about creating some sort of, of contingency plan like that? Maybe they don't want to necessarily grow a scale, but they want to be prepared if something happens.
I don't think that people don't want to grow and don't want to scale. I truly believe that they just feel like it's going to be more work for them.
Right.
And they look at, okay, I'm at this level, and at this level I've got this much stress, I work this many hours. So if I want to go to, to this level, that means the amount of stress and the amount of hours are also going to go up. Like that's, that's a, you know, very common and I think just natural feeling that that's a misconception.
Yeah, it makes sense to think about.
It makes sense to think about. So I think that, you know, a lot of times, you know, people will consciously or unconsciously say, I'm good here. I don't want to go any further. Right. Because, you know, they've, they've reached a certain comfortable level. But, you know, you've got to reach a level that's beyond comfort so that you, you know, can safeguard yourself against whatever happens. Like get beyond, you know, so you could weather any storm, get beyond where, where you currently are. Right. And so listen, if somebody's totally happy, they're totally content. They just need to make sure that they're watching, you know, certain KPIs, certain key performance indicators are seeing what's going on in their business. They're, you know, identifying any dips right away and, and still maintaining it.
Right?
Yeah, but there's maintaining and then there's building.
And if you're just maintaining, it becomes very hard to just do the same amount without it dipping.
It just naturally wants to start dipping.
It naturally wants to start dipping.
Yeah.
And so, you know, I, if somebody's comfortable, they're making the money they want to make, their business is smooth, their business is running. You know, the question I would ask them is like, if you didn't receive, if you weren't going to have more stress, you didn't have to work more hours, you could actually have less stress and work less hours, would you want a bigger business or more profitable, would you want more money? Forget about, like, how, you know, the business doesn't always have to be bigger. I know very big businesses that aren't making lot of money and I know, yeah, you know, mid sized businesses that are making a ton of money.
Yeah.
So would you want to make more money? Who's going to say no?
Right.
It's that people are like, I don't want to sell my soul to make more money. Yeah, right, of course not. But that's, you know, it's just a different strategy and it's just a different approach to doing it. And you know, we have to look at happiness too. People like money doesn't buy happiness. But one of the main indicators in psychology of happiness is if you're activating your full potential is directly tied to your happiness.
Really?
Really. So if you're, if you're, you know, if you know you could be doing more and you're not and you feel a little uneasy, you feel like something's missing, Right. It's because you've got more in you. Doesn't mean you got more hours in you, doesn't mean you have more stress in you. It just means you could use what's between your, your ears and your, you know, what's in your head. Yeah, right. To become more resourceful, to get more creative and to start saying like, is there a better way I could be doing this? Yeah. What could I be doing? Maybe raise your level of ambition to, you know, if you're like, hey, I just want to increase by 10%. Well, how do we increase by 50% or 100%?
You had mentioned earlier, what did you say? A five hundred thousand dollar mindset versus a five million dollar mindset?
Well, strategy.
Strategy. Strategy. Okay, okay.
Yeah. So I mean, you know, it's like if you, you know, if you're in a position where you're trying to get your business to, let's say, 500,000 a year, you're gonna have one strategy that's gonna help you get there. Right. And it's, it's gonna be very short term. It's gonna be very based on like next month and next month and that type of thing. But if you lay out how do we get to 5 million, even just asking that question and thinking through the answers, you're gonna have a whole different strategy. And you know what a lot of people do is they go, no, no, no, that's too much work. That's gonna take too long.
Yeah, right.
Or they don't even, they don't even think about how long it's gonna take. They just think about how much work it's gonna take and how much, like, pressure it's going to feel on them.
Yeah.
So short term, they're like, I need to get 500,000 this year. But, okay, why couldn't you get to 5 million in five years or 10 years, or 20 years and just start? So what I'm saying is your strategy changes. Doesn't mean you're going to go from 0 to 5 million in a year.
Yeah.
But what it means is you'll pass through that. That. That milestone of hitting 500,000. Of course. But if your strategy is laid out to go to 5 million, it's gonna be.
It's a game plan to get there. Otherwise, you get stuck at where your current strategy was and just spin in circles. Yeah.
Right. I think probably a lot of people don't even have a strategy. They just kind of get to a certain point and then they say, okay, I guess this is where I'm gonna stay. This is where I'm at.
Yeah. I mean, listen, there's, there's. And I get that. I totally get that. Right. Because the initial start of the business is so challenging.
Yeah.
That when you get to a place of stabilization, Right. Where you're stabilized, it's like. And it is time. It's time to take a breath.
That's okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's time to take a step back. It's time to take a breath. But once you stabilize, then you've got to come in and you've got to optimize. Yeah. Right. Take your breath, take your break, Take your time. Reduce your hours that you work. Start to pick up those hobbies that you didn't have before. Schedule in that time with the family. Great. But use your time now to optimize the business. Then once you optimize the business, now you sit back and you look at it like an amazing piece of work that you created.
Right.
You designed this amazing thing that's running. It's optimized, and now you really feel proud of what you've done.
Yeah. Right. It's okay to hang out there for.
A little, and then you hang out there for a minute.
Yeah.
Right. And then from there, from an optimized place, you decide, do I want to scale? Right. And you know, the first rule of scale is, do I need to scale?
What does that mean?
That means, do you need to open more locations? Do you need to get a new division? Do you need to get into commercial and long distance and this and that in order to reach your personal income goals? Okay. Right.
And it's not always.
It's not always the case. Right. Because it's like, why, you know, we, we, I, I see a lot of people that will open an office too soon. Okay.
Yeah.
Or, you know, open a new division too soon. And I shouldn't even say too soon in a time regard. It's more like there's this other fundamentals that aren't in place first that need to be locked down.
Yeah.
And you know, in an attempt to make more money. But when we, you know, I'll sit with several people like this and say, okay, well how much money do you want to make? And they say that number. And I'll challenge them to go, you know, compare that to what it's going to take. You know, go make a list of everything that you want in your life. What's it really going to take to live that life? Go sit with a financial planner, do it yourself, Whatever you need to do, but everything you want, what's it going to cost you to do that? Okay. That means that this is what you need to make in order to live, invest, save, pay your taxes, do whatever. And a lot of times they could do that with their one office.
Yeah.
And keep things simple.
It can be a recipe for disaster to try to expand like that without being ready for it or having the fundamentals in place.
Yeah. And so what happens is, you know, a lot of people will actually jump before they even get stabilized.
Yeah.
And go right to scale without stabilizing or optimizing. Right. And so that's dangerous. Yeah. That's how you take the whole, the whole ship down with you.
So, okay, getting back to the marketing.
What's a way for, for, let's just for the sake of argument, call them an old school person. Right. Somebody who came from those yellow pages days.
Yeah.
What's a way for them to kind of start learning about the, the new marketing SEO and pay per click and buying leads and stuff like that?
Honestly, go to, go to Louis Massaro dot com.
Yeah.
Go to sales and marketing, watch all those videos, go back in the podcast. Listen, anything that has the word marketing in it, you know, that's the place to start for free. You know, I don't, you know, we've got, we've got courses, we've got seminars, we've got, you know, coaching, we've got all kinds of programs to help with that. But it would be crazy for me to tell somebody to go on the journey I went on, when I went and I sought out the information, brought it back. Not like I went and Brought some information, like I'm just some messenger and I went and. Hey guys. I went and studied a bunch of marketing books and let me tell you what I found. No. Went and learned everything I could. Right. Books, coaches, mentors, consultants, courses, all of it. Right. Still to this day, constantly.
Yeah.
But then came and applied it to the moving business. Right. On a high level. Right. So, so, so, so for me it might sound self serving to go, go listen, you know, go watch the videos, you know, go watch my videos. But I believe that that's for anybody in moving, that is the best information out there that they could get. Right. Other than, you know, of course, you know, seminars, coaching courses and all that with us. But.
It'S so tried and true and proven and tested. Yeah, that's, that's where I would start because you know, a lot of books out there are, you know, the authors are writing them in. There's got a lot of great ones, but a lot of books are, you know, they're writing these books in a way where it's just like way over people's heads and it's totally unnecessary and it's like to make the author just sound smart. I don't know what the deal is.
Yeah.
But it's just a lot of fluff and a lot of. So it's like, you know, you know, I'll tell people all the time, like you're better off going to the bookstore and, and going to the, you know, personal development section and reading that stuff. Getting your mind. Right. Getting the psychology books rather than business. Well, especially if you're in the moving business.
Yeah.
Like we've laid it all out.
Right.
So I'm not saying it's, it's not good to learn go. You know, you could read books and you could do all that, but you asked like, where's the best place? I mean. Yeah, that's the best place.
So it's speaking of, of you know, personal development and stuff, how important is that in being able to evolve and grow and change, you know, with a business?
Yeah. I mean, you know, it comes it when you look at, you know, this gentleman here, that's a guy.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, it's, this is what would be considered in psychology a fixed mindset.
Right.
Versus a growth mindset. Right. Which is like this is happening and everything just stays fixed. Whereas in a growth mindset you're, you're looking for way you're adapting and you're growing as an individual. Right. If you look at, he started two years before I started. I Don't know where he's at. It's not about bigger business or anything like that, but the amount of growth that I've experienced from all of the same challenges that he went through.
Right.
That's what, to me, that's what life's all about. Right. Like, if you're not using every single one of these challenges that you face in your business to grow as a business person, as an individual, you're wasting those opportunities, and you'll stay stuck within those walls that are keeping you confined until you decide to grow. So you could either go over those walls, around those walls, or, you know, bust right through them.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it's super important.
Let's talk about Yelp. He's saying Yelp takes down all of the good reviews.
Yeah.
Is that just. I know Yelp is changing their algorithms, you know, frequently. And. And, you know, so we think so.
We think so we think that's. That's what we say.
Yeah.
But. But the truth is, like, we really don't know what they're doing.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's not, you know, it's. They're gonna do whatever they want to do. It's their business.
So what's. What's a way to. To ensure that, you know, you can always have a good representation of your company on Yelp.
You know, you've got to just do the best job you can, and you've got to be proactive with asking for the reviews, and it is what it is. You've got. Do they take, you know, did you get five star reviews? Did you get a ton of five star reviews? And they filter all of them.
Yeah.
What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do? I mean, what, what, What? And this. Probably somebody in this. This guy's category.
Yeah.
If we were to, you know, categorize him, would, like, totally disengage from Yelp and stop responding to reviews and stop dealing with it, because they get so pissed off that, like, all their good reviews are down that they just totally say, I'm not dealing with Yelp. Oh, Yelp wants me to advertise. I'm not. I'm not dealing with that. I'm not advertising with them. Right.
And that's not a good idea.
It's not. You. You have to accept the landscape that is out there. Yeah. You've got to accept every single bit of it. I don't care if you like it. I don't care if you don't like it. I don't care if you like Yelp. I don't care if you don't like Yelp. They're here and they're a part of this business right now. 2020. Yeah. So, you know, play the game. Yeah, that's it. You know, it's like, do everything you can to get that five star rating. And that's. That's what you have to do. I mean, it's just, you know, I say that, but at the same time, I know the feeling of getting that five star review and it gets filtered.
Yeah.
I know the feeling of getting that one star review and you can't even figure out who it is. You're like, this isn't even our customer. Right. I've looked everywhere. Like, this doesn't even make sense. This isn't even our customer. I know that, but the reality is, like, I don't know, my thought process is always, can I do something about it? If so, let me take action and do something about it. If not, let me just accept it and move on. I'm not going to, like, tear myself and have a sick stomach because Yelp took my five star review down.
Yeah.
You know, and I. It'll. It stings at first.
Right.
And the idea is, like, with that type of stuff, you know, talking about the mental game for a moving CEO. Right. Somebody that's a mo. You've got to be able to, you know, you get upset about something, your mover doesn't show up. Right. One of your sales reps does something wrong, puts the wrong notes in the system, it screws up a job. Yelp takes down your five star review. You've got to just. You'll get mad, you'll feel a burn in your stomach. Right. To whatever level. You're used to feeling that.
Yeah.
You've got to just start little by little, closing the gap between the time that the thing happens that you're pissed off about and the time where you shake it off and let it go.
Yeah. There's no benefit to just staying just.
Just is, you know, if you. If you need to feel it for five minutes and get pissed and punch, whatever you got to do. Punch walls, you know, whatever it is. Close the gap from the place where you're pissed to the place where you're all good again. Because that's where your company needs you to be on point, not to be upset about little trivial stuff.
Yeah.
It's not that again. $500,000 strategy gets mad over a Yelp review. 5 million dollar strategy says that's part of the game. Move the F on.
Yeah.
What I'm saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, either.
Deal with it or, you know, accept it.
That's it.
Is.
What could we do to, you know, what could we do to make sure that doesn't happen again?
Yeah, that's it.
Something happens. What can we do to make sure that doesn't happen again?
So you had, you had addressed the last part of his comment which he said, I'm not so sure it's, it's as easy as you make it out to be. Get real, buddy.
Yeah, I agree with that. I don't think you make it seem as easy as, as he maybe thinks you do. But I would say maybe, maybe you could give just a couple of, you know, helpful tips or pointers for, for somebody who may be experiencing some of these same, you know, feelings that this guy's going through.
Yeah, well, I mean, I think, you know, if, I think we kind of sprinkled a bunch of them all throughout this episode. Go back and listen to it again. But I would say, you know, today, in 2020, to win in 2020 in the moving business business, you've got to have your marketing on point. You've got to know your numbers, your marketing ROI report, okay? You've got to have that. You know, Smart Moving users, it's, it's in there, it's built in for you. Full disclosure, I'm a co founder of Smart Moving. You know, you've got to know those numbers so that you could test certain things, track them based on what the ROI is and then tweak them. So your marketing, you got to get, you got to get on top of that. Then your sales process has to be more than, hey, we call people, we leave them a message and we move on. And that's it. You've got to really dial that in. Go to, go to louis massaro.com, watch all the videos on sales, right click on the sales category, watch all those videos just to get you started.
And then so, and then you've got to make sure you've got your mover hiring process down, right? Yes, it's hard, double, triple, quadruple down on the effort that you make to hire movers. And instead of looking at as just something we do once in a while when we need people and we put an ad and like it used to be kind of easy. Look at it as something where this needs to be a built in process that the minute we need somebody, we hit play on the process. You know, the recruitment effort goes out and we run them through it and that's it. Right so it's. It's just. It's got to be taken more seriously. It can't be something where, you know, your dispatcher says, hey, we're short on guys, and you're like, oh, we'll run an ad. Right. You got to step it up now. You got to step it up, and you got to tackle it, because that's. That's the companies that are. That are crushing it right now. Right. They've got all three of these things lined up solidly.
Yeah.
So I would say focus on those three things. Cool.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right, good. Well, I. I won't throw curveballs at you anymore from, you know, negative comments, but I thought.
I like that. I like. It was good. I think. I think it's important, Chris, because I know there's a lot of people that feel that way.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
And it's. And it's. There's nothing wrong with them. It's just sometimes you need someone else to shed light on a different way of looking at it.
Yeah.
Right. And when you are in a position where you, you know, you're a business owner, you own the company, a lot of times, you don't have people around you that will tell you the tough things that they need to tell you, because the people that are surrounding you almost every day are your employees.
Yeah.
Right. So, you know, and sometimes you could get some decent feedback from them and some good feedback from them, from, you know, trusted people.
Yeah.
But if you don't have someone else to, you know, share that perspective and say, hey, why don't you look at it like this? Like this? I hope I actually. Let's send him a link to this. Let's make sure he gets this.
Okay. Yeah.
And listens to this and say, we made this for you. But I hope that just the change in perspective gets him to look at it, because he could change all this so easily.
Yeah.
And I say that again. He can change all this so easily. I'm not saying that the business is easy, okay.
Right, right, right.
But he can make the changes. Just. It's. All it is, is steps. Do this, do that, do this, do that. Take the steps, but believe that it's possible. Anybody that is. Is feeling this way, they don't believe that it's possible. Right. They're like, the world's going on and the world's gonna end. Like, you've got to block all that out. Ignore that. Go for what's in front of you, because the iron is hot right now, and a lot of people are making a lot of money. That's just the reality of it.
Well, he was asking for you to get real. I think you just got real on him.
Yeah. So probably more than he was expecting from his comment. But listen, guys, if you let me know what you think about these episodes. If you are loving this, if you're liking this, if you're hating this, if you're getting some perspective, some motivation, some tips, some strategies, let me know. Just, you know, send me a DM at Lewis Massaro on Instagram. Send me a picture of you listening to this. I, I love to get the feedback. I love to know that we're not just sitting here talking to each other for no reason. Leave me a review on Apple Podcasts. Let me know what you think about this specific episode. And if you don't already have your tickets for our upcoming seminar, moving CEO live, make sure you go to movingseminar.com that's moving seminar.com for three days. I'm gonna lay out detailed step by step strategies on how to dominate the next 10 years of the moving business. You need to be there. Go to moving seminar.com all the details are there. And until we see you next time, go out there every single day. Profit in your business and thrive in your life. I'll see you later. My friends.
Sa.