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You Can't Afford Me
Making the leap from employment to entrepreneurship can be a scary time. The biggest fear people have is the unknown. Here on the “You Can’t Afford Me Podast” we speak with hustlers and innovators on how to make the most of your journey. If you have questions we have answers.
You Can't Afford Me
How A Richmond Moving Startup Builds Leaders And Loyal Customers
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You know the moment when moving stops feeling like an “adult chore” and starts feeling like a full-body risk? We get into that reality with Chase Fuller, General Manager at Cavalier Moving, a Richmond moving company built on in-house training, speed, and trust. Chase’s path is the kind people rarely talk about: he starts as an entry-level mover during COVID, learns every part of the business, and works his way into leadership by doing the hard jobs first and staying consistent when most people would treat it as temporary.
We dig into what professional movers actually provide beyond “lift and drop” including full service moving, packing services, commercial moving, load-only and unload-only help, and even smaller rearrange projects like moving a bed downstairs and reassembling it. Chase explains how premium service is really a system: clear communication, smart technique, floor protection when needed, and crews trained to prevent damage instead of planning for it after the fact.
Then we take a detour into marketing you can feel in the real world. Cavalier’s presence at golf tournaments is not random; it is brand awareness in a place where relationships form fast. We also talk ROI, lead tracking inside a moving CRM, and why combining modern tools with old-school visibility works. Chase closes with what separates them from other moving companies: background-checked teams, no scrambling for day labor, and the ability to respond when another mover cancels.
If you enjoyed the mix of business story, moving tips, and marketing strategy, subscribe, share this with a friend who is about to move, and leave a review. What’s the one thing you wish movers understood before they walk into your home?
www.themrpreneur.com
Welcome And Hiring The Pros
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the You Can't Afford Me podcast. It's the fluff and real struggle. And the unfiltered journey is good. Hey guys, thanks for joining us on another episode of the You Can't Afford Me Podcast. Now, one of the biggest things I struggled with when I moved in the early days before when me and my wife were buying our first property was I had gotten to the age where my friends weren't going to slip a disc for a slice of pizza in the 12-pack of Miller Lite. I had to look at hiring the pros. Now, had I known these guys then, they would have been my go-to, my top company to use. But uh in the past year or so, we've developed a relationship. They're actually a client of ours here at Intel Media Firm. Um, and I'm very intrigued and excited to sit here and talk to one of the team members, Chase, here today on the podcast. How you doing, buddy?
SPEAKER_01Good, man. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, man. So give us a quick rundown of who you are and what you do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um so Chase Fuller, I run uh Cavalier Moving. Uh, help assist with some of our other companies we own as well. But I'm stationed here in Richmond, so I'm really overseeing, you know, day-to-day operations for Cavalier. Um, my title is general manager, so I kind of just make sure that everything's steered in the right direction. Yep. Um, any big things pop up, you know, usually I'm the one to talk to or handle it. But we have a good team that works, you know, alongside me, and we got managers under me that can you you know handle the day-to-day. Yeah. So I'm more so just making sure everyone's, you know, going in the right direction. But pretty, pretty decent gig.
SPEAKER_00Love it. Yeah, you're the guy I see at the networking events. Like you and I just get to sip a beer and everybody else is. That's the good part of it, yeah. For sure. So let's get
Chase’s Richmond Roots And College
SPEAKER_00a little backstory. Like, where'd you grow up? Where'd you go to college, all that good stuff?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I grew up uh south side of Richmond. I guess you know, people I know people from Richm call it the south side of the river, I guess. So I grew up off like Hole Street and Courthouse area on Chesterfield. Uh went to Manchester High School, graduated from there. Um, had a lot of family that went to Longwood. So initially, yeah, no, I wanted to follow in that path. Uh a lot of people in my family were teachers. That's what I thought I wanted to do. Um, so started at Longwood doing that. Um, ended up switching my uh major about halfway through because I got into the classroom and just decided it wasn't for me. So I switched to a combase uh degree, um, was able to graduate from there and you know, COVID happened. Um wasn't very exciting time to be in college for that. So uh shut school down, started to uh, you know, look at different ways I could earn some money instead of having to drive to Farmville every day. Yep. Uh stumbled upon, you know, the moving company that was working for or trying to hire some movers at the time as they were just starting out in 2020. So I got introduced to them, started working there, and then kept kept going.
SPEAKER_00Love it. So is Cavalier your first job out of college?
SPEAKER_01Technically, my first job out of it. Yeah. I mean, I had different roles, like, you know, while I was in school, you know, I coached um some you know basketball teams in uh Farmville. I did some like sales jobs just kind of intermittently through the summer and stuff like that. But technically, yeah, Cavalier has been my my first job out of college. You know, I was still working through it while I was doing my degree online to finish school, but yeah, post-school, this has been the only job I've had.
SPEAKER_00Nice.
From Mover To GM Fast
SPEAKER_00So talk to us about how you worked your way up in the company. So you started out, what was your first position with the company?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, first first position I had was just a mover. Um, you know, it's kind of like entry level for us. Um started out as a mover. Um, luckily I started out in that kind of growth period, you know, where we were, you know, first year as a company. Of course, at the time as a mover, I I could have cared less, you know, what the growth path of the company was. I thought I was gonna have some, you know, big, big time job right out of school. I didn't need anything else. But um started out as a mover, um, generally, you know, made my way to like the supervisor role, which is where you're handling contracts, customers driving, all that good stuff. Um, to which, you know, as I got to that point, I think the powers that be, uh, you know, the owners of our company, I guess, could realize I had a decent head on my shoulders and said, Hey, well, you know, if you don't want to be a supervisor all the time, this is what you could do. Yep. Um, from there moved into like a generalized sales role, just handling, you know, customers inquiring over the phone, things like that. From there, went to customer service. So I'm just really connecting with customers inquiring about questions about their move, things that might have gone wrong, whatever the case may be, things that went well. They just want to leave feedback. Um, from there, handled marketing before we had our our marketing team now, which is obviously a ton. Um, so before we had them, or before we had anyone that we hired for it, I was doing like customer service and marketing. So it's like we need to get the name out there a little more. So I would be driving around, you know, stopping by apartment complexes, realty groups, stuff like that. Um, realized that it's tough to do, you know, four different things in at one time. So uh we hired out for that and finally was able to get that off my plate. Uh moved into the operations role for a little bit, um, weekend ops. So, you know, working that weekend shift, making sure things can go smoothly over the weekend.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, moved to a weekday role, um, doing the same thing, and then eventually made it to where I'm at now where the same title. So I've been doing this position for about three full years now.
SPEAKER_00So that's a pretty crazy story to go from like the most entry-level job in the company as a mover to the GM of the company. Yeah. What do you think was the thing? Because anytime I hear when somebody has some sales experience, to me, that's the number one skill that anybody could ever acquire. Like if you know how to communicate with people, if you know how to sell, and they just sell them services like uh like you're in a romantic relationship, you had to sell yourself to your girl, you had to sell yourself to the company initially when they first brought you on. Like we're all selling, whether people realize it or not. But what do you think was the major thing that contributed from your growth in the company?
SPEAKER_01The funny thing is that like I remember the first day I applied, you know, I still go back and look at our like Facebook Messenger where I messaged the Facebook page for the company and was like, hey, um, you know, what where do I show up? Uh and they responded to what's your shirt size? This is when you start. And so I like I look back at that and think it's funny, but you can print that off and frame it. Exactly. I'm gonna frame it on my wall, yeah. Um but I think it was just you know, showing up on that first day. And you know, if if anyone's, you know, met our ownership group, they know that they're ambitious. You know, they're not just people that want to, you know, they they're not they don't just want to have a good company, they want to have a great one, and they don't want to just have one, they want to have as many as possible. You know, they know that growth is is through just constant, constant, just pushing the agenda. Um and I, as simple as it sounds, I mean, I showed I showed it to be a mover. The only thing I had on my mind was making 17 an hour at the time, get some cash tips and go back to school when you know COVID was done. But from that first time I sat down and they handed me a piece of paper to sign my name on and apply, first thing he said was, you know, do you do you want to make decent money and do you want to work hard and work for a company that you know believes in the people that work for them? And I'm like, I'm like, uh, there's only about five people that work here. You guys are two of them. Like, how does how is that possible? And so that's exactly the way they met me the first day I met them. And they said, Hey, there's a opportunity here, you know, we def we need to find people that have, you know, the good head on their shoulders if it's something that you're interested in. You know, they knew full well that I was in school, you know, hoping to do something else with my life, had no idea what you know what I was gonna do post school. But they met me with like that attitude from the start. And like I said, at the time, probably just brushed right off my shoulders. I didn't really put too much thought into it. But that's how they met me at first, you know, with the idea of what's possible. Um and it they've carried that same mindset the whole time, whether through good times, bad times, you know, slower days, busy days. Yeah. It was always, hey, you know, you're gonna get to this one point, it's gonna work out. And sure enough, it did. Um, so that's probably what's helped me, you know, stay where I'm at and keep that grind to go through each different role is I just kind of think back to that. You know, they didn't know anything about me, they just knew my name on an application online, and then they met me in the first five minutes, they they told me about that possible path and it worked out.
SPEAKER_00Right. How long have you been with the company?
SPEAKER_01Uh started in 2020, so you know, six and a half, almost seven years now.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that's a pretty quick path, like up the ladder there. Um, let me ask you this. What was it about working for a startup versus going because it's like obviously there are a lot of moving companies in our area and across the nation. Uh, what was it about you that what was it about it that enticed you to work with a startup versus like one of the big boys? Um Or it was that even a thought.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it wasn't even a thought. Yeah. I mean, I was just it was really just the weight of you know, thinking, hey, I could either drive back to Farmville and do, you know, kind of like the landscaping type job I was doing then just to make money, or I can, you know, I lived here in town, so I could stay home and you know, not have to drive an hour 45 minutes to an hour to work and make probably the same money. Never gone long wood. That's supposed to be a town in farming. Exactly. And I was like, yeah, I don't want to spend my nights at the the McAdoo or something down with the towny. So I was like, you know, I'll just stay home and do that. But that's that's all the thought I had to it at first. You know, I I didn't it like I've I've joked with people a ton of times when I make my introductions about who I am and where I come from. I'm like, you know, before I started there, moving was an industry that I I knew was there, but never knew how it functioned. I thought, you know, people just move houses and all of a sudden their stuff's picked up one day and it's there. There's that's gotta be as simple as it is. Yep. But then you find the you know intricacies of it and it's it's a lot more complicated than that. So it wasn't more so weighing the options of other companies, it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing that happened to happen to work out.
SPEAKER_00Nice. What do you think? Uh because I like the fact that you've one thing I can always say to my team members here, um, I mean, starting the company was that there is not a job that anybody is here is doing that I haven't done at some point.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00So, like nobody can ever come in here and I'm like, hey, I need this done in the next hour. And they're like, man, it actually takes three hours. No, it takes an hour because I used to do the job and I don't have as many tools as you guys now have with the AI and everything like that. Um, so does that bring a level of respect when it comes to working with your team where they look at you and they're like, he's not just barking orders at us, like he's actually done this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like to think it does. You know, that's kind of the way I looked at it at first, you know, when I first got in the role. Um, you know, we were still developing a lot early on. We didn't have a full sales staff at the time. You know, our sales team used to be handled by, you know, people doing my role prior, and then we'd answer the phones in between doing tasks. So, you know, as I got into that spot, that that was kind of my mindset. It was like, well, if I've know that I've completed every role that's below me, if anything pops up, you know, we should have an answer quickly. And if I don't know it, you know, like I said, the ownership group is right there, you know, beside me most days, or they're a call away. Yep, you know, they they'll know it because they taught me how to go through it because they did it themselves. So ideally, yes, it is positive. It's not always received the same as as you know. Like you said, you know, you've you've experienced it yourself. Um knowing that it can be done, but it might not be done the same way. Yeah, it can be received well by people that way. They could be thinking, oh great, well now I know I have someone to lean on, someone that's experienced it. Or it can be received differently. And so, okay, well, this guy thinks he knows everything. Um but thankfully, you know, we have a a pretty good you know team overall from you know, not just you know, labor staff, because I I came from that moving supervisor background. You know, I've moved similar pieces of furniture that they've moved, and I've worked, you know, 14, 16 hour days in a hundred degree heat, just like our guys do today. So it's it helps a little bit. You know, I never try to dive too deep into that because you know, I always tell myself I'm not gonna I don't have to sell myself to someone. I want people that are just gonna, you know, believe what I'm telling them. So I don't want to have to oversell, hey, you know, I've done this, you can do it. If you believe my first word that I'm telling you, then I know we're gonna be all right. Yeah. And I kind of carry that with everyone in our team because they know kind of my path that, like you said. So when I'm when I'm telling them something, hopefully they that's like in the you know back of their mind. They think I'm not just BSing them kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00And I look at y'all's industry as one of those industries that's somewhat recession proof. Because regardless, people are always gonna be buying and selling a home, they're gonna be moving jobs from one state to the other, they're always gonna need
Career Paths Beyond The Truck
SPEAKER_00this service.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um but I also look at it from the perspective like with the career path. Like you yourself said, like when you first started with a company, like I never thought about working for a movie company before, but it's kind of like with the NFL, like everybody thinks like, oh, I'll make it to the NFL, be a player on the field. There are thousands of other jobs around the NFL, whether it's marketing, accounting, like uh merchandise, like all these different things that go around that. So for someone that's considering a career and they're not quite sure um where they want to go, I feel like your industry is one where, like, hey, you want to do marketing? We need a marketing team, you want to do accounting, you need management, like all these different things. So kind of break down like the different careers. Like obviously people are just gonna think of movers, but like what are other things that they could do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, that's like it's it's tough to sell because you know we're in a position that's heavily labor intensive. You know, people graduating school, you know, they might not think, hey, you know, I just got my degree. The first thing I want to do is go work for you know twenty dollars an hour and make tips and lift heavy stuff. I'd rather go try to sit in an office or stuff like that. But they're playing barisa's at Starbucks with a master. As people, you know, learn, um, as you know, I did and you know, family and friends did, you know, once you get that career path done, or you think that you have that paper that is, you know, solidify you for this amount of time, the workforce is a scary place. It's not always welcoming. So we try to service ourselves as like a bridge gap too. You know, we want to let people know that you know, we're not, we know that we might not always get the long-term people. We get people that are, you know, a couple months, a couple weeks, and then they find that new position. I have people that hit me up all the time and say, Hey, I know you still work there, you know. Can I get a couple months of work in? Of course. Like we'll take good people all the time. Um but yeah, I mean, labor force is you know where people like to see it because they know that their schedule is super flexible. You know, we'll take people on a couple days, we'll take full-time people, whatever the case is. But at the same time, if you if you see something online through our postings that you know intrigues you about a sales position, you know, a management spot we have open. We tend to like to promote from within because we want to have people that start you know at that bottom spot similar to how I did. We want them to see that hey, you know, life isn't only being you know a labor position or whatever the case is. So we try to promote from within when we can, but obviously that's not always possible. No, you know, we didn't Kylie didn't come from the moving side of it and then make her way up. Um, you know, so we do hire from you know outside at times, but there's definitely a pass. You know, like I said, marketing, you know, we're always hiring for salespeople. You know, that's one of the things we've learned that you can't always have all your eggs in one basket. Um, you know, you can have good people when you do, but you can't pass up, you know, uh A plus talent, you know, on the outside if it if you feel like you might have A minus to B plus work going on every day. For sure. If you get an A plus candidate, you can't you can't turn those down. So you always have to be ready to grow and things like that.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Now
Full Service Moves Packing And More
SPEAKER_00let's break down the service because I'll say this as someone, because I was one of those people that always thought, like, I've said this several times on the podcast, but like I'd see people in my neighborhood like paying for some lawn care service, and I'm like, how lazy is your ass that you can't go out on a Saturday and cut the grass? But then you start thinking and realize, okay, if I can go out and command $150 an hour, why am I doing a $20 an hour task myself? Like, I'm gonna, I'm not saving any money, I'm losing money because I'm not able to go out and perform. And now, especially my age, I turned, geez, how old am I? I turned 41 or 42, please. Once I got past 35, I've been. You stopped keeping track. Um, but now there is no way in the world. You could not pay me right to move my family. Exactly. Like it's especially with kids, we got a five and a four-year-old, and just managing that, boxing everything up, making sure it's getting here, like breaking this down. And obviously, at my age too, my friends are not, I can't call them and be like, hey man, you want to do that. You can't sell them on your beer anymore. Like, I'm not slipping a disc to help you move a couch, bro. Like, it's not happening anymore. So break down that service because I think a lot of people really don't understand because you have some of those crappier companies that are just like throwing boxes around, right? But then you have more premiere service like yours. So break down the service you guys provide.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, so in terms of moving it, like I said before, you know, my viewpoint was it's as simple as pick it up, place it, yeah, and go about your day. Obviously, there's a lot more intricate parts to it. The simple side of it is we do, you know, commercial residential moves. Um, there is really not much that we can't do. Um, you know, we specialize in packing as well, you know, loading services. It's very common for people to, you know, you can't always convince people to use your entire services. Sometimes they've said, hey, I've already got my truck, just want you to come load it. And you can say, Hey, like the pods or something that they're out there. You can say, hey, you don't really need that. You know, we can move it all for you. But if you want to, you know, we'll just load it. Or people coming in from out of state, they need someone to unload their items. We'll do that. You know, we'll still show up and do that. Um, super common uh rearrange, you know, just moving items. Hey, I got a bed upstairs. Like you said, you know, you know you don't want to move, you know, you might have the nicest bed set upstairs and know that it's a pain to put together and you want it on the first floor now. It's like, okay, well, let me see what these guys can do. And you give us a call, say, Hey, I need it to move third floor to first. Perfect. We'll show up, we'll, you know, take it apart for you, reassemble it for you, get all that stuff done, and still give it the same attention as if we were doing, you know, a full service move. Perfect. Um, so like I said, residential commercial, you know, loads, unloads, rearranges, full service moves. Um, stuff like that is really our specialty.
SPEAKER_00Love it. Talk talk to me about the attention to detail that you guys get. And I'm I'm speaking from an experience that I use with another company. Now that I know you guys and we work together, for sure. When I move to the next house, you guys are handling that for me. But I will never forget the first moving company. Me and my wife had built uh a brand new townhome. This is back in 2019. We built a townhome in uh Mechanicsville, Virginia. And brand new, just gotten the key, so fresh paint, everything, perfect. I didn't say anything to the moving company, but I saw them automatically do this. They were putting like paper up on the wall and taping it so that when they were taking furniture up the stairs, they didn't scratch anything. They were putting uh stuff down on the floor so they didn't scrape the floor or anything. Do you guys provide that level of service when it comes to that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, we provide a similar service to that. You know, there's there's that extensive side of it where like the wall coverings and things like that. Um, we haven't really dove into the realm of wall coverings. Um we've again, it's probably just to the eagerness of our company, but we've always told ourselves if we're planning for that, we're planning for errors. Um, so we just train our guys not to allow those things to happen. Um, it was something as simple as even when I trained my first couple days at the company, it's like, hey, this is how you can do this. It might seem like you have no space and we don't want you to hurt yourself, but there's a way to put your body in an angle where it's going to hinder, you know, not yourself, but it's gonna use more space than you have to drag something against a corner of a wall.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01Um, that's kind of how we've always seen it. It's like, you know, hey, if we train our people correctly, we don't think we have the true need to, you know, add to a customer's time of taking an hour and a half to two hours to put, you know, drapings on a wall or paper up on a wall. We rather just train our guys in-house on our own dime and make sure that they're being taught the correct practices so that when we show up at 9 a.m. at 9.02, we're wrapping that first item and it's out the door at 9.05. You know, we don't have to do that hour to hour and a half of prep work. Um, we do the floor coverings and things like that when we need to. A lot of that is at customer request because again, that's another thing that, you know, we do offer that premium service and we want to make sure that the time is being used wisely. Yeah. Um, at customer request, you know, we can do it, obviously. We want to make sure that the customer, you know, is comfortable. Um, but we we believe that if we're training the right way, we're gonna be able to prevent a lot of this. Ooh, that GM has some PR training. You navigated that question perfectly, man. You're putting the putting the piece of paper from uh Farmville to use it.
SPEAKER_00There you go. Now,
Golf Tournaments As Brand Marketing
SPEAKER_00let's talk about your the marketing because I think you guys have done something a little bit more unique in terms of your approach to marketing that I haven't seen too many companies do. So obviously, you and I both share a love for the game of golf. Uh, it is the only sport that you can love the hell out of it, and it's never gonna love you back. Uh but even before we started engaging with you guys, like the golf tournaments I was playing at, I always saw a cavalier moving there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So talk to us about your you guys' strategy. Obviously, the social media component, we help you guys out on that end. You have a great uh in-house marketing team on that side with the socials. Why did you guys choose to go after uh and target golf tournaments as a way to promote your business?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I wish it was uh there was some complicated thing. If you know, we use, you know, we were the first to get to AI and it told us to do this. But you know, myself, you know, our two owners, we love the game of golf. You know, we were thankful enough to just attended Augusta for the Masters. Oh so it's over that kind of shows that kind of shows our love for it where we were, you know, able to, you know, Paul, man. You were at Augusta. Yes, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00All right, give me we gotta take a little detour, man. Give me a quick three-minute summary of your experience.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's fantastic. I mean, it's it's it's way more than you can ever imagine. Yeah um you know, everything that you see online is true. Yeah. The Pro Shop, gift shops got everything you could imagine with uh Augusta's Master's logo on it. Um, the food, cheap as could be. Yeah, those memento cheese sandwiches for a dollar. I was walking around with one in each pocket. Nice. Um, you know, and you can spend, you can get, you know, five sandwiches, two drinks for 12 bucks, and you're on your way. That's crazy. Um, you know, the grounds are, you know, for people that love golf, yeah. The grounds are pristine. You know, when you're just walking on it just to enter the place and you see, you know, the hills in front of you, the trees, the staff, everything is just are they actually pumping in because I've heard stories that they're pumping in the audio of like birds chirping and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00Are they a lot of things?
SPEAKER_01I heard plenty of birds chirping. Oh, okay. I mean, you'd be standing there watching someone hit from the fairway, and it seems like there's got to be a nest somewhere that you can't see. But you know, it felt natural. It felt natural, but I mean it was just insane. It was it felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity. Um I I truly hope you know I'm able to go back. We're we enter the raffle, you know, every year, just like everyone. But it was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
SPEAKER_00Well, next year call it brother, man. No kidding. It came to us quick.
SPEAKER_01It was like, hey, we have them. Do you are you interested? And I was like, Yeah, you gotta move quick on the stuff. Drop of a hat, we're down.
SPEAKER_00You gotta move quick on the stuff. What players were you guys following?
SPEAKER_01Um, so we got there super early, just like everyone else. And it was the final day, so we were there for Sunday. And I mean, that's like the biggest day. You know, you get to see the main people. Um, started out early, followed Speeth a lot. Um, JT teed off. We're watching him for a little bit, and then once once Scotty teed off, we were following him. So we followed Scotty from maybe two to twelve, sat at between like 11, 12, and 13, the Eamon corner area. I really thought he was gonna make that comeback. Oh, dude. We thought the same thing.
SPEAKER_00It's just that would have been one of the greatest comebacks in sports history.
SPEAKER_01It would have been nice, it would have been nice, man. I mean, but it's insane, man. It's like it's like anything, it's like, you know, even the services you provide, you know. I can think that I can make a post about anything and make it look good, and then it's pixelated. Uh, I can't do the same thing that you can do. It's the same thing like with golf. And you know, I think that I might hit a great shot, and it's like, man, that's the best shot I've ever hit. You know, I can tell from contact to where it lands, and then you watch a a professional do it, and it it's their misses are our greatest shots ever.
SPEAKER_00Like when they miss a ball, uh that would be the greatest shot I've ever hit in my life.
SPEAKER_01It was I I couldn't even. It was almost I was speechless every time I'd see them hit a ball, and it just sounds like you know, a rocket going off from contact and it's perfect. And I mean, stuff like that. And then like everyone's there watching one thing. You know, I I've been to football games, I've been to basketball games, you know, you're cheering for teams and stuff like that. But you know, someone makes a good shot. You might not like the player, but you, you know, you appreciate it. And the roars that you hear there, man, it was it was something.
SPEAKER_00It's literally probably, oh, correct me if I'm wrong. I would assume it's literally the only major sporting event where people aren't doing this all the time.
SPEAKER_01That was uh just like I like I've seen you, you know, you're always you know active on socials, you know, you're working, it feels like 24 hours a day at times. Same for us, you know, we're always reachable. Um, you know, myself, a lot of members of our team, and obviously the owner. So if something pops up, I gotta reach them. You know, that's probably the first time, and I cannot even remember that I've been without my phone, watch, any source of technology for 14 hours. You know, from we were we arrived at 6 a.m. Phone was in the truck, we were waiting in line to get in, didn't get back to the truck until 7 30, 8 p.m. And you know, I it was something that was weird for sure.
SPEAKER_00That's gotta be a somewhat of a freeing feeling where it's like, because we think we have to have these devices with us all the time.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I'm walking around, I'm checking my pockets thinking that I've left something. I feel like I'm checking my watch, my what my like my wrist is vibrating because my watch is using going off. But it was it was interesting for sure.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome, man. Last question, and then we'll move on from the masters. Uh, money you spent in the Pro Shop, sub 500 or or above?
SPEAKER_01Oh man. Uh the stories I hear from everybody.
SPEAKER_00I haven't heard anybody get out for less than.
SPEAKER_01For household purposes, we're gonna say sub.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I get it. Yeah, we're gonna say sub.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna say sub for sure. But outside of the household, uh, that number will stay in house for sure.
SPEAKER_00All right, so back to the the marketing on the golf. So yeah, you you guys and your team, you have a lot of gaming.
SPEAKER_01I mean, we just love the game, man. I mean, every opportunity that we can play, you know, when work is stable, we're gonna do it. It's something that we find just you know joy in. Yeah. Um, and then obviously, you know, with marketing, um, once we started ramping that up a ton, you know, we were we started out at events just attending, you know, as just people that wanted to sponsor a team, helping out these causes, you know, what may be, and said, okay, well, these people have these tents here. You know, this looks nice, you know, how they're giving this stuff away for free. That's that's pretty cool. And then we're leaving these events with, you know, 12 cups, pens, you know, ball markers, all this stuff. We're like, we can we can do the same thing. I mean, we can we can replicate that. And we were confident, you know, in the people we had. And, you know, we've had good people that work for us before. That's all great. You know, we're thankful for anyone you know that's worked for us, kind of thing. But then you bring in people that, you know, really will put their head down and kind of grind to it. And that's kind of what we found with our newer team. Obviously, like we've talked about Kylie, you know, in-house. If you haven't seen her at a tournament before, you'll probably see her at one this year.
SPEAKER_00Um she slipped me a couple shots at the last time we played with you guys.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we try we try to make sure everyone's having a good time if they're not going to before. But once they get to us, they will. But I mean, that's the model. It's like if we can if we can have that presence, you know, somewhere that most people, especially for golf tournaments, are having a good time, you know, wanting to enjoy a day away from work, but also be able to promote themselves and their company, we want we want to be able to do the same. You know, we're not trying to be, you know, different than anyone else in a sense. We just want to, you know, people to show up to our tent, our table, not feel like we're always trying to sell them something. It's just, hey, you know, if you go out and golf with somebody, you might think someone might say to you, hey, like as you're hitting a putting like, oh crap, you know, I'm moving coming up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, oh, actually, well, yeah, when I was at the course the other day, they had a great setup. These are the people I met, and you might not know us from anything. Yeah, obviously you do, but it could be someone that's random and says, Hey, actually, I remember these people that were at an event I was supporting. You know, why don't you give them a call? Yeah, just the main premise behind it is we just want to be out there. We want people to recognize the brand. You know, the trucks, they're bright orange, they're white, they're blue. You know, you can recognize them from a mile away, but we want them to recognize the people too. That's the main premise behind it. You know, if we can enjoy golf simultaneously, fantastic. Win-win. The win-win.
SPEAKER_00Because
Tracking Leads And Sponsorship ROI
SPEAKER_00I'm I'm currently obviously I'm a digital marketing guy, so I believe in social media video podcasting, all that stuff. I'm starting to change my thinking in terms of getting into more forms of traditional marketing, like what you guys are doing. Like I'm considering billboards right now. I'm looking at I don't know if I should say this on the podcast. Fuck it. I'll say it. Uh I'm looking at, I got this idea from a guy who owns an EV uh company in California.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00So what he's doing is he's paying, you guys can take this because I don't I don't own the rights to this. Uh he found some Uber drivers and he pays them a hundred bucks a month and he makes the huge magnetic signs and they put them on their Uber while they're doing the driving. And I'm like, that is genius. Because then it's like you got the branding going around.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, going around a ton.
SPEAKER_00People getting in the car, hey, who's Cavalier movie? Like, yeah. So I'm the only thing, my only hang up there is like, well, how can I verify that they're actually?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, how do you know that you know how do they putting that magnet on? Yeah, are they doing it every time? Are they doing it once a day or once every trip?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I'm still wiggling through that, but that may be something you gotta do. When you see it on a different Tesla rolling down the road, we touched that but with that, like kind of talk to us about the ROI that you've seen with that because now my mind's intrigued in terms of just from a pure branding perspective. So a lot of people don't understand the difference between branding and marketing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So when you're marketing, you're trying to convert to sales. Branding is truly just brand awareness. You just want people to recognize the name so that when they're thinking of moving, you're whether they met someone from your company or not, they may have just seen the truck roll by, they may have seen your tenant of the golf tournament, didn't even talk to you guys, but they recognize the brand. What's the ROI that you guys have seen from that in comparison to like other forms of marketing? Are you really seeing ROI with this?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I it feels like we are. Yeah. You know, we our our CRM we use is purely based around moving. That's something too. It's like, you know, thinking back to how we first talked, it's like, you know, moving, it's got to be pick up, put down. Yeah. There's umpteen CRMs out there that are purely catered to helping companies like us function day to day and track everything. Ours is is perfectly useful for it as well. Um, we're able to track affiliates and where people are coming from. You know, if it comes from you, we got a tab for you where we can track and say, okay, well, you know, Sam's giving us this. Okay, perfect. Well, he's got 20 leads in a month. Same thing for that. It's like, yeah, you know, we could have 10 people that say, Oh, I saw your truck. Okay, perfect. Well, if we don't get those as much, are we changing the design or are they not as noticeable? Um, so I mean, ROI is a is a big part of it. You know, every company is going to function off of that. If they're dumping money, if we start dumping money into golf tournaments still, yeah, and we don't get the same ROI, we might move to bowling or whatever the case is, we might move to something else. But um, we always try to look of it as like our average move value. Um, you know, we know what that number is year by year, day by day. Um, we try to see, okay, well, if we're spending, you know, some, you know, $2,000 for a sponsorship, what do we have to get out of that? We have to connect with, we have to connect with one person. Obviously, you can connect with one large homeowner who might be able to help us, you know, a good spot. Or we can connect with three people at that event that have um, you know, daughters or sons or cousins that are moving out of an apartment. Smaller moves, but we can get three of those that's gonna pay for our sponsorship for that event. That's kind of the way we look at it. Um, it seems as you know, black and white as could be. It's like, okay, well, you spend money, now I gotta see what I get back. But that's that's the way we've always thought of it. Um, you know, if we're gonna commit to something that large, how can we get it back? And that kind of reverts back to, well, if we have people out there that we trust are, you know, Kylie, Allie, you know, myself, other members of our team that are out at these events, are they making an impression that two to three, four, five, six months from now, yeah, when someone's saying, hey, yeah, there's a moving company I know, or yeah, man, I cannot think about moving this myself, but I guess I'm gonna have to do it. The first thing that might come to their mind is the people they talk to and the brand itself. Um, and it might lead to something down the line. We're not always looking for, you know, next day return. If we pay $2,000 for a sponsorship or $500 for a whole sponsor, whatever the case is, we know we're not getting $500 the next day from a move, but it could be if we get it two years from now, you know, it's still gonna work out.
SPEAKER_00Pays for itself, long-term thinking with that piece. Yeah. Um,
In House Teams And Background Checks
SPEAKER_00last question I'll ask you is without dropping any names or smashing anybody, what's the what's the big difference between you and the other guys in town? Because there are a lot of moving companies here in the Richmond area. Oh, yeah. Why would someone come to you guys over the other guys?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's tough. The key thing you says without smashing anybody or and that's the biggest thing too, is like, you know, most businesses, I'm sure, practice it, just like yourself. I mean, there's there's media companies that you can run into every day. There's some probably within a half mile, two mile radius from you. Yep. But you know what you can offer that's completely different and why people should choose you. I mean, we have that stuff narrowed down to our science, like I said. We're training people in-house, all of our employees work for us. You know, there's not if you called us at 5 p.m. as soon as we're kind of winded down for the day and said, Hey, my mover's canceled. I gotta, I gotta get someone here tomorrow. Can you do it? We are gonna have our people there tomorrow. Yeah, we have our staff ready to accommodate that at the drop of a hat. Other companies in the area are probably not gonna operate that way. They might have you know their schedule filled to capacity, and they might have to put feelers out on, you know, Facebook marketplace, whatever the case is, forums to say, hey, I need these people tomorrow. I need two guys, I need three guys, which is just part of the industry. That's what it is. You know, it's not like they came up with the idea of using day laborers or day contractors. That's just what moving is you know littered with. It's just how it works. We're just not gonna do that. You know, I can't sell to you, or I can't sell to anyone at a golf tournament, or I can't sell to a realtor that, hey, you know, I'm trusting the people I'm putting in your home if I hire them that morning and then I never see them again. Yeah, you know, I just can't. We can't do that. You know, it's just a it's against what we're pitching every single day. Yeah, and it takes one time of breaking that policy just in a in a pinch or a bind, and then it could, you know, hinder everything. So that's our big thing. You know, we're all full-time employees that work for us, they're all in-house, trained in-house. And the other thing, they're fully background checked, right? You know, that is another thing with moving a lot of day labor positions, what or skilled trades, whatever the case is, you know, we're moving furniture. We understand there's not a ton to it in a sense, but we try to put a lot in into it. You know, we're not just gonna, you know, lift, walk, place, be on our way. We're gonna do it the right way. And the big thing is making sure that the people we're uh allowing to walk into our office every day, attend, you know, our company, represent them with a shirt on their back, kind of thing, the name on their shirt. You know, we want those people to be trusted. Yeah. And as long as they can pass, you know, our criteria we have to put people inside people's homes that are spending, you know, a more premium price for our service, you know, we believe it it's worth it. Uh-huh. So that's it's it's as simple as that. You know, it sounds like there could be, oh, well, we're doing this. Yeah. But everyone's everyone's moving furniture. You know, it's there's there's a practice to it that's perfect. You know, we're trying to still perfect it every day. But if the people that are paying our premium service, you know, are willing to do that and they can trust that we're gonna put people in their homes that are you know A plus guys, you know, they've passed a background check, they believe in the work they're doing every day. Yeah, and also we've always said you can't you can't believe in the work you're doing or put out great work. Like I said, if you work on a Monday and you never work again for that company until two weeks later on a Tuesday. Yeah, you know, our guys are working Monday, they're gonna walk back in Tuesday morning, we're gonna see them. Hey, good morning. How'd this go yesterday? Uh could have been better. Okay, well, here's how we can be better. Now let's go out Tuesday and let's do the same things, but let's work on that. Same thing Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You know, we're open seven days. So we're seeing these guys every single day. And there's value in that. And that's kind of why we sell it that way. Is you know, you have to know that the people that we're trusting to be in there are there for a reason.
SPEAKER_00Love it. Yeah, love it. Couldn't have said it better, man.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00Now, if people
Booking Options And AI Intake
SPEAKER_00want to book you guys, they want to inquire about your services, where can they go to find you guys?
SPEAKER_01Easiest thing I'd say is website. You know, our website is super user-friendly. You can fill out a quick uh kind of like a questionnaire kind of thing that's gonna allow you to put some brief information, it'll shoot it right to our CRM, pop up of a little bell that's gonna say, hey, this person wants to be reached. We'll call you within you know five minutes or less. Obviously, we try to shoot for that minute time frame, but with the line, when the lines are busy, we only have so many people. That's another thing, like I said. You know, our sales team is all in office. You're dealing with people that are living in Richmond, Chesterfield, Mechanicsville. So they got they got to take time to call you if there's not just an endless amount of people kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01Um, or you can just call our direct line, you know, 804-404-8048. Numbers on our trucks, you see it everywhere. Yep. If you call that, that'll get you directly to us.
SPEAKER_00Give people the web address and the social.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you're right. So the uh the good thing is too, and I know we kind of briefly touched on the AI part at the beginning. We're getting some feedback on the AI. We we've started that recently where you know our we have our sales team, but when the lines are ringing, we thought, okay, well, would you rather go straight to voicemail or hang up? Yeah. Or would you be met by an AI version of our team that can get that preliminary question started to start your file? Thought about it for a while, finally put it into play, and we love it. I mean, it's just something you have to feel like you're adapting with the times. Would you like a voicemail that you know you might see or you might not? Instead, we have an agent that's, you know, an AI affiliate that's going to receive all your information, create your file so that when you know one of our salespeople gets off the line, they don't have to call you and say, hey, let's run through A to Z about why you're moving, what you need. Instead, the system already has that created because they've communicated with our AI system. And as soon as we call, we're selling them. We don't have to go through the basics of, you know, what's your name, what's your address. It's the system's already gotten that. Now I'm calling a you know a super hot lead instead of just being a warm one. Yep, you know, it's ready to roll from there. So that's if you by chance don't catch a a person, it sounds, it sounds like a real person. I promise you that. But if it doesn't seem like it, we're gonna call you soon for sure.
SPEAKER_00Love it, love it. Appreciate you being here, day, buddy.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate it, man. This is fantastic. I appreciate you having me.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. We'll see you guys on the next episode.