Blake Fitzpatrick and Sunshine Movers

In today’s episode of Jim Sells the Suncoast, Jim sits down with Blake Fitzpatrick, the owner of Sunshine Movers. With 10 years of experience in the moving industry, Blake shares valuable insights into what makes Sunshine Movers different and how they go the extra mile to ensure a smooth moving experience for their clients on the Suncoast and beyond. From local moves to long-distance hauls, Blake discusses everything you need to know about planning your next move.

Key Takeaways:

• Personalized Moving Experience: Sunshine Movers handles all traditional moving services, including packing, unpacking, and transporting, but they also go beyond by helping clients navigate other parts of the moving process, like updating addresses and transitioning to new schools.
• Local vs. Long-Distance Moves: Blake explains the key differences between local and long-distance moves, from logistics to cost, with long-distance moves requiring more precise planning due to factors like weight, volume, and truck capacity.
• Quote Process: Sunshine Movers offers both over-the-phone estimates for smaller moves and on-site estimates for larger, more complex moves. They take the time to carefully assess your needs and ensure accurate pricing based on cubic feet, labor, and specific requests.
• High Standards of Care: With unique services like "soft crating" to protect fragile or high-value items, Sunshine Movers is committed to ensuring the safe transport of belongings, especially those with sentimental or high monetary value.
• Preparation Tips for Clients: To make the move smoother and reduce costs, Blake emphasizes the importance of preparation. Ensuring everything is packed in uniform boxes, getting rid of unnecessary items, and clearing off furniture are key steps to speed up the process.
• Customer-Centric Focus: Blake’s team prioritizes communication, offering a follow-up call after booking to ensure no details are overlooked. This extra step helps clients feel more at ease and ensures that their specific needs, including family heirlooms and high-value items, are carefully addressed.
• Community Involvement: Sunshine Movers is not just about moving furniture; they’re about moving communities forward. Blake talks about their charitable initiatives, including free moves for nonprofits and their commitment to giving back to the Suncoast area.

What’s Next?

Need help with your next move? Reach out to Jim, and he'll connect you with Blake!

Interested in buying or selling a home on the Suncoast? Reach out to Jim at jim.ahearn@gmail.com or visit his website, Jim Sells the Suncoast.

A Personal Note from Jim:

Hey there, I’m Jim Ahearn, your go-to real estate guide and host of Jim Sells The Suncoast podcast! 🎙️✨ Dreaming of Florida life? I’ve got you covered! As your dedicated buyer's agent, I’ll handle everything from walk-throughs to closing, making your home-buying journey as smooth as a Florida breeze.

Whether you're local or tuning in from afar, I’ll bring the Suncoast to you with virtual tours and expert advice. Let’s chat about your dream home and I'll connect you with all the right people to make it happen.

Ready to move to paradise? Drop me a line – I can’t wait to help! 🌴🏡

Transcript

Jim: 0:00

Hey, good morning today. I've got Fitzpatrick with sunshine with me. We're going to talk a little bit about the moving and what we're doing in the community and how he can help prepare you for that. He's been in the industry for 10 years running sunshine movers with me welcome Blake. Thanks for coming on.

Blake: 0:14

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Beautiful Monday morning. I'm definitely grateful that I have time to do a podcast on a Monday morning and that's thanks. Absolutely.

Jim: 0:22

And the weather is getting unreal anymore. I walked out, it's 78 clear skies. This is why we live here.

Blake: 0:29

I normally have to carry five outfits for me every hour. You got to change. Cause I'm dropping down to three right now.

Jim: 0:35

That's right. Early, late, and then really late. So talking about Sunshine Movers, what specialized services do you offer to enhance that moving experience on the Suncoast? And then is there a difference between local and long distance?

Blake: 0:49

Absolutely. So we offer all the general services that a moving company offers packing, unpacking, Moving, loading things into a rental truck. If they have a rental truck, of course we have our own trucks. But anything that's related to moving, we do it. But what's interesting is that we also handle things that are not necessarily under a moving companies, umbrella of services, right? We like to educate our clients. And realistically, when people are moving, there's so many things that they have to deal with. They got to deal with the mortgage lender. They got to deal with the title closings and all this different stuff. There's a lot that goes into moving, preparing, changing your address. If you got kids changing schools, that's a big ordeal. So we try to help our clients through all this. A lot of information that we have on our website, sunshine movers. com. We'll walk them through this. So we try to approach it, not necessarily saying, Hey, that's not our job, but Hey, let me help the customer with this because we know that's going to help the move go smoother. And that's the goal, a smooth move every time.

Jim: 1:44

Everything's integrated and you can't do one without the other. How do you take that and make it a simple process?

Blake: 1:50

Yeah, absolutely. And not every client has a great realtor like Jim. And so they might have questions that maybe their realtor should have answered or walk them through. And we find ourselves helping clients with some things that somebody else really should have, but that's okay. Because if that helps the move go smooth, then we're all about it. That's what we want at the end of the day.

Jim: 2:08

That's the teamwork that goes into anytime you're buying or selling. It's not one person. There's a whole team involved. And if everybody's coordinated and working together, the customer is the one that wins.

Blake: 2:19

The customer needs to win every time, even if there's no coordination between everybody, we're going to try to pick up the slack on the back end. That's the difference of sunshine movers and other companies. We like to help. That's it.

Jim: 2:30

So how do you manage the logistics of moving belongings over varying distances around the Suncoast?

Blake: 2:36

So are you asking like longer distances?

Jim: 2:39

Or both, is there a big difference between the two or it's just a matter of scale?

Blake: 2:44

Yeah. Huge difference. You got to figure this, with local moves, people aren't uprooting their entire lives. So there's not a whole lot of, there should be a lot of preparation, but some people prepare a little less for a local move than they would a long distance move. So with a short move, we noticed that sometimes there'll be some odds and ends that didn't get packed because they didn't think about it. They think of things being easy. It's just going from this house to the other house up the road. Truthfully, yes, everything should be packed. But we're prepared for those unpacked items. When it comes to long distance, it's a little different because you're being charged by weight. You're being charged by volume. We're looking at these things because you can only fit so much in a truck. And if it's more than one truck, a second truck to go across the country makes a big difference. A second truck to go up the road doesn't make that big of a difference. So when you're doing longer distances, when you are restricted by the weight and restricted by the, how much stuff that you have, it does make a difference and we have to plan for that. So if we look at a client and we say, okay, you are right at 1700 cubic feet. We know that's going to be over a truck, most likely. So we'll take the client and we'll say, Hey, listen, this is just over a truck. That would be a much bigger bill. Or you can go back and say, you know what, you've got a couple of big items that look like they're older. Maybe if you think about not taking those, that might save you a whole truck, which could save thousands of dollars. So you'll have one company that'll just go quote what they have. And then when we come in. We're going to look at those types of things and say, Hey, if it's not that big of a difference to you, just shaving off one or two items might mean the difference of thousands of dollars. And then they're going to be appreciative and say, Oh, absolutely. That bookcase, I don't care about it. Let's get rid of it. Save some money. So yeah, there is a little bit of a difference, longer hauls and short hauls. And I want to make something clear. Sunshine movers doesn't charge per weight or per size. When we charge for a long distance move, it's a flat rate. So when I mentioned that and I said, charged by weight, charged by volume, it's not necessarily charged by weight or volume, but we do deal with those restrictions and the

Jim: 4:39

parameters that entail everything that's going into it.

Blake: 4:42

Absolutely. But now on the flip side, and this is good information, let's say, when you're doing a local move and you have a flight of stairs at the beginning and the end. That could be the difference of, 1, 000, depending on how much stuff you have. That's a lot of additional time. But when you're looking at long distance moves, a lot of the money that goes, the costs that go into the long distance moves are the fuel, the drive time, the drivers staying overnight, multiple nights going. So when you add a flight of stairs to the beginning or end of a long distance move, It's not that big of a difference because so much of the money and the volume is in the, the longer the driving and the time and the fuel and the truck being down.

Jim: 5:20

Yeah. There's different levers for the short and long distance. So being able to one, be aware of them and then to make those decisions based on what's going to impact it.

Blake: 5:29

Absolutely. Yep. And I would say if there was a big differentiator, there's different things that adjust the costs, and local moves it's unpacked items and stairs on long distance moves. Pretty much volume and distance. That's the reality of it.

Jim: 5:42

Yeah. Okay. Can you walk us through the process of obtaining a quote for moving services? And is there a difference in that for short or longterm?

Blake: 5:51

Yes. And yes. Getting a quote is this, in terms of the first steps of getting a quote, very simply, you can fill out the form on our website, sunshine movers. com. And then we'll get back to you as soon as, if you're requesting over the weekend, we'll get back to you on a Monday. But typically if it's Monday through Friday during business time, you're going to get a call back within the next 30 minutes to an hour or you can just call them to the office. And then from there, we're going to take some preliminary information because a lot of people think that moving companies always go out to do an estimate. A lot of moves. If it's a small move, Let's say it's a one bedroom going from a ground level to a ground level. We can estimate that over the phone because there's not a whole lot of variables, right? Add in, Hey, we, it's a three bedroom. It's going up a flight of stairs and we're going to have you pack. There's more variables. So it's harder to give you an accurate estimate over the phone. We go out and do an onsite for that. So we'll come out. We'll look at over all the furniture. We're going to collect an inventory. We're going to plug it into our system. And that gives us a cubic feet. So X amount of cubic feet, we know how many guys can move X amount of cubic feet per hour. So using that inventory, we'll have our guidelines and our numbers and that sort of thing put together. Now we can look at something and say, Hey that's going to be an eight hour move for three days. But we use that calculation and that cubic feet just to make sure that we all have our numbers consistent and correct It's a backup. So we do the inventory get the cubic feet. We'll ask you lots of questions Maybe there's something very important about the move that you need done a certain way Maybe you have family heirlooms that we need to spend a little bit more time to take care of or high value items and we're going to take all that information and put together a quote and send it over to you And in our quote, it's nice. It'll differentiate The packing from the moving. If you have a multi day move, let's say one day is loading the truck. And then three days later, we're unloading the truck. Maybe there was a gap in the closings, which we accommodate. You'll be able to see those separate days. You'll see the loading time, the unloading time, packing time. We send that over to the clients? They review it. And we move forward from there. We collect a small deposit to get them on the schedule. One thing I do want to mention that we do differently than other moving companies. And I just introduced it to my company about a year ago is we have two operations managers, and that's very unique. For our size, we only need one, but we have two because I know the importance of communication with clients. One thing I learned, this was a theory of mine and so far it's been running strong clients when they're getting an estimate or a quote for their move, they're talking to multiple moving companies. Maybe they're still dealing with the cloudiness, the concerns of, okay, what am I going to do? Is a quote going to be good? There's all kinds of things going on. Once the job is booked, once they know that they're secure, they feel good about us, they're happy with everything. They booked their move. It's after that, that they can almost start to relax a little bit. And they sit back and I figured we need to have another followup call that's right after the booking and that we are going over all the details with a customer because now that they're relaxed, they may think of other things or they might mention those heirlooms and what we're noticing is I was 100 percent correct. And those follow up calls are making a seamless transition from the move coordinators, getting the information and scheduling the move to the guys going out and performing the move. We close the gap of communication there. And so that second operations manager, what he's doing is he's dialing in on that contact communication with the client, getting that information and making sure that we're educating them along the way. And it's making a huge difference. And you've got to figure another moving company that would only have one operations manager. We have two realistically, that's a 5, 000 a month difference. That's a 60, 000 a year difference. And that's just minimal. There's other costs involved, but that's the difference of what we're willing to do for customer service and guarantee that quality. And if you haven't seen Jim, we don't have a review under five stars on Google. I take that back. I have one four star review and it's a beautiful four star review and I like it there. And you're more than welcome to go read it and read my response cause I love that four star review. But we don't have a bad review and I want to keep it that way. I said I wanted to go five years without getting a bad review. We did that now we're about to complete our 10th year and we're going to knock on wood. I think we're going to get it. And it's these things right here. It's making sure. It's that second operations manager, or it's that experienced person in the office. That's going to communicate with the customer and actually appreciate the customer rather than somebody that's, there's a lot of moving companies, a lot of companies in general, they've got these younger people with no life experience taking calls and not able to really communicate. Communication is a big deal, but it's important that they be able to communicate with the customer and the customer feel comfortable. They feel open to communicate back. And so I have experienced people in my office that have good quality conversations with, and that's what makes the difference. and I know you're not asking me questions and pulling stuff out of me, but I want to go into another piece here, and this goes for all service industries, all services, no matter what it is. I'm sure you have a cost that you charge that you want to make sure is fair, but you also want to make sure that you're being paid appropriately. We get pushback every now and again, and that's completely expected. We get pushback on some of our pricing. And typically we see that we're right about with everybody else's rates, hourly rate per man per hour. If you're doing a flat rate, we're still using an hourly rate to build that up. And what we notice is that we're about right on par, about 5 under or 5 over some of the competition.

Jim: 11:19

You're not the bottom line or the top end.

Blake: 11:21

And I've also had people say, Oh my gosh, you're so affordable. Best quota I got. That's awesome. I'm glad to hear it. But we also hear every now and again that we're like 5 per man per hour, more than other companies. I'm here to tell you it's literally, it's that extra operations manager. It's the having my staff. I have guys that are paid very well. I don't want to put their rates out here in the world, but I'm going to tell you that they're paid a lot more than any other moving companies would pay because they're outstanding human beings. They're not just good movers. They're good human beings. And that's very hard to find in the moving industry, but we find them. And we pay them well to keep them. And then when these customers, they say, Hey, I had the most amazing moving experience. Ron Jason Tom, they were all fantastic. That's because we have fantastic guys because we take care of them and pay them well and bonus them. Everybody, every single person in my company gets a bonus every month. And it's 100 percent based on taking care of the clients. All my incentive bonuses are based on happy customers.

Jim: 12:16

So you're not moving. You're creating an experience for the people because buying and selling house is a huge experience in anybody's life. And if your value you're creating makes that easy and you're hitting things like that second follow up when you're under the gun or when you have stress you know what? You're going to move great. Come on and move. And you're like what about the piano? What are we going to do with that? Or what are we going to do with the chandelier that your great grandmother gave you hadn't thought about that great. Now let's walk through that while everybody's in a better state of mind to really appreciate and understand what you're doing.

Blake: 12:48

Yeah, I can't. I was so happy to see that be successful because I thought about it. And one night I have a lot of nights and maybe other business owners might relate, but I have nights where it's 11 o'clock. I'm just winding down. And all of a sudden this little thing turns on and I start thinking and I can't stop thinking. I pull out my notebook and I start writing notes down so many notes that I forget what I even wrote the next day, but I pull it up and I read it. I'm like, Oh my God, that's good. And I remember my idea for that second follow up call came in the next day and I just brought it in and it worked. I'm proud of that one. I'm proud that we give a better service to our customers from an idea that I had.

Jim: 13:23

No. So some of that leads actually into the next question I had, which was about how do you prioritize the safety and security of items? What is important? In the move, what are the items that really mean something to them? If you're moving an end table, it's an end table. Yeah. We don't want to damage, but it's an end table. If it's, the bed that's been in the family for 200 years, you're really going after that.

Blake: 13:43

Great question. Fantastic question. If any other moving companies watch this, they're going to probably put it in their playbook. That's okay. That's great. More people being taken care of, even if it's not from us. So it starts from the move coordinator. So whenever we have move coordinators if we're trying to educate them on what high end furniture, what delicate furniture looks like not, yeah, of course there's family heirlooms. And that has to be a question because you cannot always spot a family heirloom. There might be something that you would have no idea. And then they tell you, and then you write that down. we train everybody to ask those questions from the followup call to the new coordinator, but there's also the just identifying part. So I don't know if you're familiar with a furniture store called Clive Daniels and hey, I have no problem plugging them because they're fantastic. They donated to our recent cause for fighting the breast cancer, which is right behind me. So Clive Daniels, amazing furniture store. They have some very, if you've ever been there, they have some very designer pieces of furniture, very delicate, not normal stuff, glass tables that shift and do things. we'll take them there then walk them through and go over furniture by furniture and show why that needs to be notated and why we need to make sure that we add a little bit of extra For some of that furniture. When we do an estimate, we're trying to estimate how long it takes and there's certain furniture that takes longer. There's no secret. I dealt with 50, 000 couches before. I always remember this one red 50, 000 couch. That's why I always say it 50, 000 couch. It exists. We're going to wrap up a 50, 000 couch a lot differently than we would a regular couch from rooms to go. Because nobody wants to pay us to wrap a rooms to go couch for an hour realistically you can spend an hour protecting one couch We have to identify those items and make sure that we calculate that time in for the estimate and also make sure that we let our crew know, Hey, this sofa is high value. This desk is a family heirloom passed down from generation to generation. It has long skinny legs. Be very careful with that. We have different things in place needing special attention. Now there's something else that we came up with. And I know that I can probably name a dozen moving companies. One thing that I do is I'm a mentor for other moving companies. I also have a mentor of my own. I have mentors of my own that mentor me and I also mentor people other moving companies on their way up. So one of the things that I have mentored people on is something called soft grading. This is where if you, let's say, let's just say that you have a glass Kerio cabinet and it has glass windows on it. So if you were to just simply pad wrap that and then shrink wrap it. That's that plastic wrap that goes around it. you can still bump into that. Break that glass. A pad is great. It's a cushion, but it's not gonna protect glass if it were to get bumped from being smashed. We came up with something called soft crating, so we pad it. Then we wrap it in cardboard. We encase it in cardboard. And there's a skill to this, how to get it to match the corners and the grooves and the angles. And we can case the entire furniture in cardboard and then we shrink wrap it. So we basically give it a hard shell and we use this on glass cabinets. We also use this on, if there's furniture, that's just high value. It doesn't have to have glass on it. We've dealt with small end tables or side tables or dining tables made out of live edge wood. We wrap it in cardboard before we shrink wrap and it creates that nice hard shell That's something that i've actually, trained to other moving companies over the time and i've seen them using it and it works great.

Jim: 17:11

Looking from the customer's point of view. Are there any specific packing strategies? That you would recommend from their side as they get ready or as they do some of their own prep

Blake: 17:19

Absolutely fantastic question. Reason why is because a lot of people don't know how to pack. There's movers out there that don't know how to pack. I know. Because we bring them in and have to train them from other companies. So yes, here's the easiest thing I can tell you. The more paper, the safer, you start your box off with paper in the bottom. You wrap everything that's going in it in paper. If there's holes that you don't have anything to put in that little hole right there you're playing Tetris. It's a puzzle. If you got a hole, fill it with paper. When you're done, fill the top with paper and then you seal your box. Now I knew this was a problem years ago. And some of the best packing videos that I have ever seen are the ones that we made that I personally made in a studio. That are on our YouTube. They're also on our website. You can go to sunshine movers. com and dig for them, or you can go on YouTube and go to sunshine movers of Sarasota. It's going to pull them up. And we have packing tutorials from dishes to artwork, to canvas, art, to China, to stemware. And I really did a good job of showing each step. And why those steps are done. Putting paper in the boxes, how to use the right box. What is the right box? All these things, how to tape the box. I can't tell you how many times we've picked up a box at a customer pack and stuff's falling out of the bottom. And it's so unfortunate because who's liable there, right? It's definitely not us, but I got to tell you that I've still, tried to do what I can to take care of the customer cause we care. And we just want them to have a good move. And to me sometimes. Doing things that I don't normally have to do or shouldn't do, like taking care of something that we weren't liable for. That's what makes the difference. And sometimes we do it. But we would rather educate all of our clients to do things the right way. So these things never happen.

Jim: 18:59

What is there in terms of insurance or protection plans for clients?

Blake: 19:02

Absolutely. So every moving company has to offer the minimum value of a real, it's called released value protection You'll hear a lot of different terms, but it's basically releasing liability. And that is 60 cents per pound. That is the minimal amount. That we absolutely have to give clients for free. It's 60 cents per pound per article. So if your TV were to get broken. And it weighs 20 pounds. That would be 12 in reimbursement. Now we also offer a higher coverage amount and there is some, there's some strings attached to all this. And I'm going to touch on those. There is a higher coverage available. It is full value protection. This is where people pay a few extra dollars to get in writing that if something were to get damaged, that we would offer to repair, replace, or purchase the item up to its market value. So if you have a sofa that you paid 5, 000 for. Five years ago, it would not necessarily be worth 5, 000 today. There would be a depreciation that they do that. You can do that online. You can go and find things like that. And then that would be the limit of what we go up towards to either repair, replace, or purchase the item. Truth be told, a lot of people don't even look at the contract. They don't look at what they're signing. And then they just sign off on release value protection. And then when something gets happened, We typically end up paying for even with or without as long as everything checks out If you have a fifty thousand dollar sofa, you never told us it was fifty thousand dollars You signed off for the release value protection and something happened to that sofa You're not going to get fifty thousand dollars from us If you wanted that you would have to fill out that extra protection Because look at the nature of it now if you had just a regular sofa from rooms to go And you did not get the extra coverage Let's say one of the feet got broken and it's going to cost us 150 We're not going way out of pocket. It's not like we were getting gouged for this. We try to do the right thing. Every chance we get. Sometimes things don't make sense. We've had items that have this happened recently. I was on a move. It was actually a high value move. And she did have protection on her move. Previous damage is typically not covered. If something was glued together and that glue broke apart, you can't hold the movers liable, no matter what coverage you have on it. It's previous damage. It's almost like it was a time bomb ready to happen is all we had to do was touch it. And if we were held liable for certain things like that, we would be taken advantage of. If I had a move coming up, I'm going to go find something that was previously broken and put it in the move just so they rebreak it again and get a new one. It doesn't work like that, but we are so fair here. I hear about so many moving companies that just say, you know what? The contract says this, we don't care. We don't do that. We always go above and beyond. And this was a big training portion for me to the rest of my team, to my two operations managers, when a client comes forward and something happens, when do you do this, when do you do that? And because we leave it a little gray area because we'd like to take care of the customer. It's a lot of training that goes involved. So

Jim: 22:09

when you're moving, especially on the Suncoast, what are some of the common challenges that you see here in the Suncoast? And I'm going to guess that the heat is going to be a big one.

Blake: 22:18

Rain.

Jim: 22:18

You

Blake: 22:20

know, the moving season is summertime. That's our moving season, even though we're in Florida and seasonality is a bit, our seasonality is not like other parts of the country, but countrywide nationwide summertime is the moving season, because that's when families want to move, they don't want to, uproot their kids in the middle of school. For Florida, that's our rainy season. That is our rainy season. We know between three and six o'clock we might have those summertime showers. So we prepare for that. We actually, when we're estimating jobs in the summertime, we purposely estimate them to be anywhere from six to eight hours versus allowing, if there's even a possibility that might be going on past eight, we're going to put an extra guy and knock it down to get that move done before the potential rain comes in. One good thing about the rain in Florida is it's choppy. It comes, it goes very quickly. So we are able to work around that. Close the doors out, wait five minutes and it's sunny again. Other than the rain we deal with the same challenges that any company does, and that's employees finding good employees. And that's why we do so much for our I have a thing inside of me that's wrong that I just want to take care of everybody around me all the time.

Jim: 23:26

But that's why people want to come work. With you and for the company.

Blake: 23:30

Absolutely. And I'm glad you said with, cause I, I don't, I despise when people say that they work for me or I'm a boss, we work together. We're a team. I appreciate my team as much as they appreciate what I'm doing out here in the back end. We are a team.

Jim: 23:41

Nothing gets done without them.

Blake: 23:43

Yeah. So that was, that's the biggest challenge is finding and retaining the right guys. But, we do a lot for our guys. We had a very powerful team meeting this morning. I'm talking about the growth of the company. I try to include my team to be a part of the growth, at least know about it. They don't know that we're out here doing the men wear pink. Campaign where we're supporting the fight for breast cancer awareness. They don't know that we have this giant party putting together. That involves community. That's all about raising money. They don't know about these things. So I like to bring it to their attention and show them, and I want them to know that they are a part of these things and it's helpful, but there's something I had in my team meeting this morning. And this is actually going to be the first time I talk about it. One of the things that we're trying to position ourselves in this community is not just to serve the community, but to actually be a part of the community. when I say that, we give free moves to nonprofits, say law, freedom, healthy teams. The good Samaritans there's different organizations that we've been giving our moving services for free. And that's great. People love that. We love that. The guys get to see it because they actually are out on the moves and they know that we're doing the move for free because they see a big old zero on the bill there. So we appreciate that. But I'm trying to do more. And I'm trying to systematize it. I want to make sure that we know exactly what we're doing, how we're doing it and what we're doing it to give. back to the community. And I had an idea, and this is where you're going to hear it for the first time. I want to make it mandatory that everybody in the company give a certain amount of time of volunteer work. And I know that my office is all on board because we did some and they were all excited about it. But my guys, the crew members, those are the ones that you got to, Hey, so we had a team meeting this morning and that was one of the things that I rolled out is how I would love if they would contribute. And be a part of these and that we would do them in small groups of five, and we're going to get with the Lakewood ranch business alliance, I know that they do a lot of stuff and then get ahold of, get some projects together. That would be unique for us. And that way we could do small groups of our guys, like three to five guys, maybe even a couple of people in the office at the same time. And I want to start giving back. I want every one of my employees to experience the opportunity of volunteering and truth be told. I'm going to pay my guys to do this. So really the real volunteering is out of pocket, but truthfully these guys, I want them to at least be a part of it because that's going to do something. It's going to feel.

Jim: 25:57

They're ambassadors one for you and for the community and helping people that maybe don't have the ability to do some of these things. It's great to make that connection back within the community.

Blake: 26:07

And I gave a speech the other day at the women's council of realtors at the Berlin and patent office. And it was supposed to be something that inspires. And it was right after I noticed the importance of involving my team in some of these opportunities to give back. It's magical. So if you, when the times, I know you've given back, you've done things in the past, those times when you walk away, you feel really good. You feel like you're a part of something. And a lot of people don't have that opportunity. They don't have the time. They don't think of it. They're busy with life and the hustle of life. So by me taking these people out of work one day and putting them into this, they're going to walk away feeling a part of something. They're going to feel appreciative of that. They're going to feel that magic feeling inside of them that they wouldn't have felt otherwise so it's one thing to give back. It's another thing when you involve the people around you, your family, your employees, your coworkers, your friends. Bring them with you. You don't even realize the magic that you're doing because now they're going to walk away feeling accomplished. Like they did something, they're going to feel good. And a lot of them would not have done it without you or I or others. Bringing them in and pushing them in. You brought them into this feeling and that's the magic right there. That is, I got goosebumps right now. We started doing this nonchalantly unintentionally. The office came with us and we saw what it was doing. And then I'm like, Ooh, I want to take this to my employees, my guys. I want to take it to the crew members. This morning I had that team meeting and they were Nice.

Jim: 27:36

Yeah. You know what, in taking that feeling, how is it, how do we help people help themselves? So a customer comes to you, they want to make a move. What are a couple of things that they could do to help you and help the whole move go smoother?

Blake: 27:51

All day long in terms of the mood right? What can the customer do to oh, this is easy and we always we tell clients this all the time It's literally written in everywhere that you can any quotes that are getting sent emails that are getting sent. It's all in there Preparation is the number one thing getting rid of the items that you don't intend to keep Making sure that everything is packed in a box that can go in a box. That's the number one here's the easiest way to think about how do I make my move cheaper in the long run? How do I make this go smoother and faster? It's think about this every trip to the truck takes time you have furniture There's nothing you can do about that The furniture is going to go with a couch is going to take two guys a dresser's going to take one guy on a dolly That's a trip to the truck and when he's done he loads it into the truck And I'm telling you this for a reason. He loads it in the truck. They play Tetris, they stack and then they wrap and then they pack. And so they bring it in there. Now, when you have boxes go on a dolly about five to six at a time. Again, one trip out when you have open boxes, they don't go on a dolly. So what are we doing? We're carrying that to the truck. Not only do we carry it to the truck. Now we have to find a place. I can't put it over here. I got to put it on the very top of something because That becomes a puzzle piece. And if you've ever done puzzles and you got weird pieces, you just can't figure out where they go. Those are the items. It's the unpacked items. It's the open boxes, it's the milk crates, it's the laundry baskets that you filled up. Those are the number one thing that add time to the clock. And that's just taking it out to the truck and finding a spot for it. Now you add a set of stairs or an elevator, you are adding ridiculous amounts of costs. Now you have to take it to the elevator, set it down. Take it down, pick it up, put it in the truck stairs. You can only carry one thing at a time. And guess what? When you have stairs, the trip from the house to the truck, it takes a lot longer because it's not just a straight shot. No, it's going down the steps. Then you go down. There's a lot involved. So the best 100 percent way to save money on your move is to have everything packed in a box. Furniture cleared off and ready to go. We've gone into some houses and it looks like they're not even moving. There's a coffee cup. They're drinking their coffee. There's a newspaper. They're just hanging out. Things are not back and that's fine. We're going to accommodate it. We're going to try to catch that on our follow up call, But nonetheless. Furniture cleared off of debris, everything packed in a box using uniform boxes, not all like 50 different types of boxes. That's another huge tip. And these are all tips I've put on my website too, with videos. When you have mismatched boxes. People like to use the 50 different size boxes that Amazon provided from all the buying that they've done over the last year. So you have all these different boxes. Imagine the puzzle that we have when we have boxes this big, that big, this big, that big, and we're trying to them and put them. But imagine the difference when we have just three types of boxes and look right there. That's a large box. a small box. So those two boxes, and there's typically a medium as well. You have three different sizes. They can stack uniform. It's safer for your items. Think about this. When a box is set exactly on the same size box, that means the walls are lined up. They're supporting each other. It's safer. If you've ever taken a small box and it on a big box, like that one right there, imagine if that small box was really heavy, it could push down into that box. So just having them all uniform sizes makes a huge difference. And one other little tidbit that a lot of people movers don't even know this, but these boxes, their sizes are not the same, but they're in proportion set up to where they can be stacked and then be flush. So two smalls will fit on a large sideways and it'll be perfect. So that's why they're moving boxes. There's a difference between official moving boxes and just boxes.

Jim: 31:28

Yeah. And I think that I know I'm guilty of it, that, you have six different sizes and you stack them up and you wonder why it didn't really make it any faster. There you go.

Blake: 31:36

And people take what you can get, if you're at your house and you've got the Amazon boxes stacked up. Whatever, go for it. There is very rarely a perfect move where everything is set up so perfectly. And when we do see them we tell them we appreciate that. I gotta give out freedom, a shout out. We did a free move for them. And anytime we do, A discounted rate or what we've seen is like somebody else will be paying for somebody's move. Maybe it'd be the employer we've seen where a friend pays for the friend's move when people aren't paying for their move in full They usually don't do a whole lot of preparation we did a free move for out freedom and I got to tell you I appreciate they had things wrapped up Cleaned up ready to go If they wouldn't even have fully packed, we would have in, help pack the rest of it. It would have still been a free move, but they had everything buttoned up and ready to go and dialed in. So that helped me keep the cost down. Cause we were looking like, okay, what's it going to cost us to do this move? They did really good with the preparation and we actually saved an hour and a half of what I was expecting it to take with six guys. That's a big chunk. And if you're paying the bill and you get these things done, it's going to save time. This is mind blowing stuff. What we do here compared to other moving companies. Remember I told you that we have a cubic feet calculation off of the inventory. We put in the inventory. It says we have 1600 cubic feet. We know X amount of cubic feet gets moved per hour per man. There's a standard number of cubic feet per hour per man. We actually bumped it down, which makes the moving estimate even bigger. We estimate our moves on the high side and hope to give the customer a bill. lower at the end of the day. And that does two things for us. One, it stops the price shoppers from using us. If they were that excited to save a hundred dollars on their move, they're going to go with another moving company and that's okay. And make sure that we get the right clients for us. Here's the big one that it does for us because there's always those what ifs, are they going to be fully prepared? Are they going to use the right boxes? Are they going to still have coffee cups? Again, local moves, less preparation. There's a lot more of these instances of things like this coming up. That extra little fluff that we put in our estimates covers that. So this way, we're not having to have that tough conversation. Well, ma'am, because you didn't have everything packed up and you had a little bit of clutter, your move took a little longer instead of having to have that conversation for those instances with those clutters and those little mishaps, we end up getting right on the estimate. And then for those customers that get the preparation done, They get a bill handed to less than the estimate. That's a very happy customer. It's also very happy guys because when a customer found out that their bill is 250 less than what they expected, that 20 that they had per guy for their tip set aside, that just turned into 40. Now the guys are happy, customer's happy, everybody's happy. The only people that are not happy are the people that went and chose another moving company'cause they wanted to save a hundred dollars and then got what they got in the end. Yeah. And it's tough. I actually told my team, if you let customers that have really nice furniture go with another moving company, you are doing a disservice to them.'cause I know when it comes to high end, high value clients and furniture, we're one of the best, if not the best in the area. Some people just don't understand the importance of good moving services or good moving company. And that's okay. That's why we have our estimate set up the way we are. They will go find cheaper moving companies or what they think is a cheaper moving company if that's what they really want. And then we get the clients that want to be taken care of because that's what we do. We take care of our clients.

Jim: 35:08

Blake, I can't thank you enough for coming and spending some time with me today. I want to tell everybody, listen, if you're looking for the company that's going to take care of you and make the moving experience simple, call Blake.

Blake: 35:20

Thank you so much. Yep.

Jim: 35:21

Thank you.