Scale Your Moving Company With Systems, Not People

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It's Louis Massaro, and welcome to another episode of the Moving Mastery Podcast.

What's up, guys? We are live. It's Wednesday the 23rd, and I want to talk to you about something that is super important. If you really plan on scaling your business right, you know, there's a difference between growing your business, you know, getting more moves, getting more business, and actually being able to scale it. And when you talk about scaling, scaling your business is something where you basically take what's working, you create a model around it. Let me fix this screen here so I'm not looking down at you guys. How do I do this? Just fix this. Move this over here. All right, now I can see it. So when you're scaling your business, it's really. You're taking what's working, right? You're creating a model around it, and then you're scaling, right? So let's say you have a successful moving company. You are.

You're doing really well. You're in your local market, but maybe you want to grow and expand to multiple locations. Maybe you want to franchise your business, right? Maybe you want to build it up to be able to sell it over the next two, three, four, five years and cash out. Maybe you want to get into something totally different. In order to do that, you have to create a model.

One of the fundamental principles in creating a model business is setting up your systems and your processes, all right? Because you do not want people to run your business. You want systems to run your business, and then you want the people to run those systems, right? So think about it like this. If you. Right now, right, Most people, most small businesses, moving companies and other companies, they have people running their business, right? So basically, what. What it looks like is they'll have a manager, they'll have a few different managers and themselves kind of overseeing what's going on. And what happens there is. There's inconsistency, right? There's almost an inability to grow your company because you're counting on the people that you have, and they're following.

Somewhat of a guideline, somewhat of a preference that maybe you've laid out for them on how you want things done. But if you're going to grow and you're going to scale or you're going to have your current company be able to step away, right? And, you know, go. Go away, or work on something else or have hobbies or, you know, be able to at least have the peace of mind, knowing that everything's running smooth. You've got to be able to have systems in your business to run the business, and then you find good people to run those systems. But when you have systems and processes and what I'm talking about here, I'm talking about documented procedures on how everything's done. Think about some areas of your business where maybe you have employees or your team working on that area, but you're not quite sure if it's getting done exactly how you want it. That's going to keep you small. That's going to keep you in a place where you feel like I have to stay at this level in order for me to keep my eye on what's going on. And if you really want to grow it, you know, it's going to be a challenge. I mean, I know this, right? When I started my moving company, you know, I started out of a truck rental yard, two rental trucks. In order for me to grow and expand, I had to put systems in place, I had to put processes in place, and I had to fine tune them and tweak them and get them just right. To be able to open the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth location. Right? To be able to open a call center and have all that running, to be able to, you know, do $20 million a year. While I wasn't really working that much, other than when I wanted to be working, growing the business, right. I wasn't there every day having to run the business. You know, my. One of my best months ever, we did About a million nine in one month. 1.9 million in one month. Most of that month I was gone. I was in Europe for a few weeks.

You know, it was just to be able to have your business run, you've got to have the system. So I'm going to say it again. You don't want people to run your business, all right? You want the systems to run the business, and then you want the people to run those Systems. Look at McDonald's, right? It's a perfect example. You go to a McDonald's anywhere in the world, for the most part, it's running the same way it's running consistently. Is it because of the people? No, it's not right not to take anything away from the people that are working at McDonald's, but it's not the people that are making everything run smooth. It's the processes, right? So we go out there as small business owners and we look for this magical person that's going to come in and run our business. We're like, I need somebody with experience. I need somebody with you Know, it's been in the industry before that knows all this stuff. Listen, I've been there, I've done it, right? When I opened my first call center, you know, I was like, oh, I need, I need this call center expert to come in and, and show me what to do. And when I started long distance, I was like, I need somebody from the van lines to come in and run this company. Not only one, I need two people from the van lines to come in and run this company. And what you come to find out and what you realize is that it's not the people, right? You've got to have the systems, you've got to build those systems and you got to be able to put those in place. And then you get those right tools, the right people, and you put them in and now you've got something that's really running. And guess what? When you've got systems that work, when you've got processes that work, you don't need as expensive of people, right? You don't have to go out and pay this, you know, top dollar to find someone who's, you know, got all this experience and all this, you know, know how, because you know what you want them to do, right? That's, you know, for people to come to moving sales academy or people that are in the online course, it's like, hey, look, this is what needs to be done, right? This is what you hand to your sales manager and say, here, implement this. You don't go hire a sales manager, say, show me how to set up my sales, right? You have a system, you have a process.

And then you have somebody run that process, right? This is something that, you know, I work with. I have a group called the flagship group, right? Where moving company ownership, each group's limited to 10 people per group. They come to my office for four times over the course of a year. I talk to them every month. Our accountability coach talks to them every week. And this is one of the things that we go through is how to set up processes, how to build systems in the business so that they don't have to worry about, you know, I need to go hire somebody, and if they're good and they're with me for a couple of years, wow, I had a good couple of years. But when they leave, everything falls apart. They knew how to do everything, and now no one else knows how to do everything, right? So any way that you want to scale, any way that you want to grow, right? If you want to, you know, build up your current company and then Expand, open additional locations, right? You need to create a model, right? If you want to franchise your business, what a franchise is, when you franchise your business, what you're selling, you're selling the model, right? You're telling somebody, hey, look, I'm going to give you the step by step of what you need to do. You just need to follow that and be successful at following exactly what I give you, and you're going to make money. That's essentially what a franchise does, right? But maybe you're like, hey, Louis, I don't have these big aspirations. I don't want to, you know, make a, you know, grow nationwide company. I just want to have a nice business that I could pass down to my kids that they can run. Well, let me ask you a question.

Do you really want to pass down a business to your kids that's unruly, that's stressful, that they have to be there every day working to try to figure it out? Wouldn't you rather hand them a business with a model and a system of exactly how to do things, where the processes are laid out, the systems are laid out, and now they walk into something that's, you know, listen, you might have had. I'm sure that, you know, you started your business and it was stressful, and maybe it's still stressful to this day, right? If you don't have the systems in place and you don't have the processes in place, I can assure you you don't have the consistency that you want. And you know that. I don't have to tell you that. But if you're going to scale, if you're going to pass it down to your family, you've got to start thinking about implementing your systems, right? If you want to know how to do this, if you want to work with me over the next year, go to talktolewis.com There's a link there, and fill out the application. I only take 10 people into the group. It's a group. But whether you get into the group or you don't get into the group, I want to make sure that you kind of get this, you know, the wheels going in your head about, all right, look, what am I going to do? Am I just going to spend this next year, 2013, 2019, and, you know, like, do the same thing I've been doing? Or is it time for me to get serious about saying, all right, what is it going to take to build a foundation that I could start growing and I could start stacking on top of, right? And in order to do that, well, the first thing that you need, you need to have, you know, a blueprint. You need to establish what it is you want, where it is you're going, right? Because we can all climb. We could all go out there and hustle. But if you climb the wrong wall, right? Like if you have the ladder and it's on that wall and it's supposed to be on that wall, and you start putting in all this effort and you go to the totally wrong place, that's not going to be successful for you. So you got to establish your blueprint number one. Then you have to get your systems in place, your systems, your processes. I'm talking about in writing. I'm talking about exactly what you step by step of how to do every process, from confirming moves from your dispatcher, confirming moves to your accounting process, to what your bookkeeper needs to do, step by step to make sure that you have an accurate profit and loss statement every single month. Everything needs to be documented. And this doesn't happen overnight. But you've got to start right then. Next thing you're going to need to do is create freedom for yourself, right? Once you have the systems in place, once you have the processes in place now you need to be able to kind of step away, learn to delegate, and get the right people in place to run those systems, which is totally different than, let me go find the right person to run my company. You just need them to run the systems. The systems are running the business, okay? So now you get those people in place, and now you're able to step back, right? You kind of step back and you're able to manage your business from afar, right? And we're talking about scaling your company, right? Taking it to the next level, Growing, expanding, building it to be able to sell it. And to do that, you need to be able to step away, right? And it's not all about like, hey, just go on vacation, right? Although that's one of the great benefits of doing this. It's about if you're going to work on business development.

Meaning if you're going to spend the time and say, all right, I want to franchise this company, or I want to open up multiple locations, or you know what? I want to be a hometown dominator. I want to dominate where I live. I don't need to go anywhere else, but I want to get into long distance, I want to get into commercial, I want to get into hotel moves. I want to do all of that in my area. You need to spend your days Working on business development, not working on business foundation stuff, right? So again, you kind of establish your blueprint of where you want to go, then you build your systems, then you create the freedom to be able to step away from the day to day stuff so that you can work on business development. Think how if you had someone that ran your business, right? Let's just say I know, let's say I was holding a contest, I'm not, but let's just say I held a contest and I was like, hey, look, the winner is gonna get me. And you know, four people that I'm gonna hand select to come run your company for you for a year while you go and do whatever it is you want to do. Okay? Now you'd be like, oh, okay, well, let's say that happened.

What would you do with that time if you had to use that time to grow your company? What would you do with that time if you know, you knew everything was running good, right? Because you know, I know you have those, I know you have those visions, I know you have those goals about, you know, that next level and about that growth.

But the day to day is what holds you back, right? It's like, I can't find the time. I've got to get this, I've got to get that. So again, that's why you've got to have the freedom if you're going to be able to scale your business. See, a lot of people try to go and scale and try to grow their company.

But they don't have these things in place first, right? They don't have their blueprint in place of exactly what that means for them. And it's different for everybody. They don't have their systems in writing to where the systems are running the business. And then they get people to run the systems, then they don't create that space of freedom for themselves to be able to step away, know that everything's running good based on the systems and the processes and the people that they've put in place and their delegation and ability to delegate and feel confident that things are getting done correctly. And now they can work on business development. At that point you could scale. At that point you can grow, right? And to do it before then, you're just, you're either going to hit a wall and stumble or you won't get as far as you could, you wouldn't get as far as your potential would allow you to get if you kind of laid these things out.