Moving Companies' Biggest Expense... Labor

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Hey, my friend. It's luis massaro. And welcome to the moving mastery podcast.

Before we get started today, I just want to take a minute and shout out all of our moving CEOs out there, members of our moving CEO business program that have been absolutely, absolutely crushing it. I'm just really excited for you guys and the results that I've been hearing about.

And if you're not already a member of our Moving CEO business program, you.

Definitely need to go check it out.

It's called Moving CEO Business Program, and.

You can find out more@movingceo.com this is the program where I go live every.

Single month, training moving company owners on.

My latest strategies and what's working today in the moving industry and coach you to be at your very best each and every month, depending on the level that you join at.

There's also additional courses and trainings I'm.

Sure you've heard about.

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You'Ve got to join us for our next monthly live training. In these sessions, we get to network.

With moving company owners from around the world and be able to share ideas on what's working.

And, you know what?

What? You know what new innovations people are.

Applying to their business to get results.

We're building an amazing community. If you're not already part of it.

Make sure you go to movingceo.com and check that out. And without further ado, let's jump into today's episode.

As a moving company, one of your biggest expenses is labor. So in order to be profitable, in order to make money, you've got to get your labor percentage under control. And what do I mean by that?

I mean, if you're doing, let's say.

100,000 in business and you're spending 25,000 on your labor to do the 100,000 in business, you're paying 25% in labor, right? That's your labor percentage. Well, your labor percentage is directly tied to. To the amount of money you're charging for your moves and the amount of money that you're paying to your movers. And if you don't get this number under control, I've seen companies go out of business because of this. All right? And the worst is like years and years of doing hard work and being in this business and not making the profit that you should. If you're joining me for the first time, my name is Louis Massaro. I am founder and CEO of Moving Mastery, where we help moving company owners set up proven systems and processes to increase profits, reduce stress and, and live a better quality of life. And you know, recently I'm working with a private client who, you know, they came in, they've got great crews, they've got a great reputation, they've got a great business that they've been operating, great team, but their profit margins are way too low. So I'm working with them on a few things. We're taking a look at the different areas of their business and one of the things that we were able to identify immediately was the labor percentage being too high, right? And you might say, well, Louis, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to just cut my labor cost? Am I supposed to just pay my movers less? Absolutely not. You definitely don't want to do that. Number one, these days it's hard to find labor, right? I'm advising a lot of companies to pay more for labor than they used to in order to be able to get and keep the good help. So it's not, you know, reducing your payroll percentage is not about reducing the amount that you pay your movers. Let me just make that clear. What it is about is looking at the entire pie, right? Is only 100% of the pie. And if you're spending, you know, 25, 35, 45% just in labor, that leaves that much less for everything else, right? So now you've got your other expenses, your other cost of goods sold, you got your other fixed costs that you need to spend and you've still got to be able to make a profit. So what we need to do is we need to lower the percentage your payroll in relation to your gross revenue. So I'm gonna give you three tips on how you do that today so that you could start making more money in your business without.

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

Hey, my friend, it's Louis and I'm just hopping in really quick to remind you to go get your free demo of Smart Moving software. Smart Moving Software is a company that I co founded that is quickly becoming the leading moving software in the moving industry. And I'm super excited for you to check it out. So go get your free demo today. Just go to smartmoving.com, that's smartmoving.com and sign up for your free demo and check it out today.

The second thing you want to do is every week you want to run your payroll percentage, okay? You want to know what your percentage is on a weekly basis, right? So let's say you did for round numbers. Again, I'm just going to say 100,000 in the week, right? Good sized company, right? Doing 100,000 a week and you're spending 25,000 in payroll, that's 25%, okay? So start tracking that number, whatever it is for you, and establish your benchmark from there. You want to monitor that every single week because any dip or any increase in that number tells you that there's something that's changed, there's something that's different. Which brings me to the third point, which is you want to monitor your overtime activity, right? You want to monitor over time because, you know, if you're sending, you know, 60 hours to one crew, 60, 70 hours to one crew, and they're getting burnt out, and meanwhile you've got other crews that are at 20 hours, right? And they want more work. Well, if you're able to spread that out, that's going to save you in overtime. It's going to save you from burning out the other crews. But what happens is typically, you know, dispatchers, or even the owner, if you're the dispatcher, you know, you kind of got your go to crews, your favorite crews, and it's just easier to give them the jobs. But you've got to be able to monitor the overtime and make sure that it's not excessive. It happens. Great. Guys are getting overtime, awesome. But you just want to be able to spread that out. So raise your rates every single week. Look at your payroll percentage to see where you're at. This will help you identify all kinds of things. High overtime, theft, people working off the clock. There's a lot of different things that that's going to help you to identify, start tracking it and you'll see for yourself week after week how it all plays out.

All right?

And then of course, monitor the overtime. So I hope this was helpful. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed making it for you. Until I see you next time, go out there every single day, profit in your business and thrive in your life. I'll talk to you soon.

If you really want to take your business to that next level, then I want to invite you to join us in our moving CEO business program. This is the program where I go live every single month training you on new strategies to implement into your moving business. All new strategies that you could apply to your business to start quickly seeing results. This is the program that we have moving companies from all over the world that join us every single month for live training. Plus they get additional courses, they get tickets to my live events. This is the program that basically keeps our moving CEOs on their toes, keeps them fired up, keeps them working on the things that actually matter in their business so that they have a place to come to every month. Maintain and keep that free. Focus on what they're really working on, what they're really after and what matters today so that they're working on the right stuff. You know, this is where I train on all my latest strategies. The things in marketing, sales, operations, finance, you know, how to manage your team and leadership. It's all in the Moving CEO business program. And head over to movingceo.com and check out all the different membership options there. We've got, you know, companies that might just be starting out. We've got companies that have been in business 10 years. We've got, you know, nationwide multi location franchises that are members that come every single month so that they can make sure that they're on top. Their A game, right? We're all, you know, wherever we're at in our business, we need to make sure that we're constantly getting that zap of energy, that zap of new ideas that we can implement. So we're working on the right stuff. We want to work on what matters so that we could profit in our business and, and thrive in our life, right? It's all about setting up a better quality of life. And once you've got your systems in place, once you've got your processes in place, once you've got your people in place, you're able to manage them and lead them in the right direction, then you're able to take a step back and start to really enjoy the fruits of your labor and the business that you've created. So this program where I teach all of this, it's called Moving CEO Business Program. And you can check it out today@ movingceo.com so head over there, check out your options, and I look forward to seeing you on our next live monthly training where I also answer questions and take feedback and help you reach that next level in your business. It's called Moving CEO Business Program. Check it out@movingceo.com thank you so much for joining us on the Moving Mastery Podcast and being a part of this amazing community. And until we talk next time, go out there every single day. Profit in your business and thrive in your life. I'll talk to you soon, my friend.