Ep. 84 - Identify the Need: Building a Niche Empire in the Trades with Ed Katz

A competitor ten times bigger rolls into town, undercuts your price, and takes your market share nearly overnight. Most owners panic, cut margins, and burn out. Ed Katz did something different: he listened to what customers kept asking for, built a system to deliver it, and turned adversity into a breakthrough that transformed commercial moving. 

We talk through Ed’s path from Wall Street to entrepreneurship, why “identifying a need” puts you most of the way to the goal line, and how one ugly Friday-night breakdown taught him the real value of processes and contingency planning. Then we get practical about estimating: why accurate man-hours and a repeatable formula beat gut feel every time, whether you run office relocations, excavation, concrete, electrical, or any other service business where one bad bid can wipe out months of profit. 

The story takes a wild turn with Ed’s “boxless move” innovation: space gobblers that let teams move desks without emptying drawers and the spider crane that safely lifts loaded file cabinets. That differentiation didn’t just win jobs, it let him charge premium pricing while delivering a better customer experience. We also get into leadership lessons every blue collar business owner needs, including the moment Ed realized he had built an upside-down org chart and the seven words that started creating real decision-makers on his team. 

If you want better estimating, stronger systems and processes, and a clearer way to stand out in a crowded market, press play. Subscribe to the Blue Collar Business Podcast, share this with a friend in the trades, and leave a review so more owners can find it.

Transcript

Welcome And Sponsor Shoutout

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast where we discuss the realest, rawest, most relevant stories and strategies behind building every corner of a blue collar business. I'm your host, Dyke Irvey, and I want to help you what it took me, trial and error, and a whole lot of money to learn the information that no one in this industry is willing to share. Whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox. Guys, welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast. Brought to you and sponsored today's episode is by Paytard Support. Um, they're your absolute key partner in precise takeoffs for excavation and earthwork projects from accurate quantity takeoffs, estimating, and 3D GPS modeling. PayDert gives excavation contractors the data they need to plan smarter and win more bids. Visit PayturdSupport.com to build more profitable projects with confidence. Get with the team over there, tell them I sent you. I tell you guys just about every episode, but we I've personally used them within SideCon. They are not just uh a sponsor, but a partner as well with things that we do internally monthly. So go check them out. Today, guys, we are running, we have a legend on our show today. Uh a legend in his own lane. He's he was doing all of everything that we think is cool. He was doing it 30 years ago. And um, gentlemen, I believe he's probably going to uh be the eldest entrepreneur that I still have active that is on this show. And don't let his age fool you because this gentleman is a wealth of experience and knowledge I've learned just in a few phone calls with him. But we are diving off into a little bit of the education lane, but also to what you can work towards and getting there and building, you know, your own vision of it's not just about building a company, it's also helping others along the way. And um, this gentleman figured that out very, very early on. Founder and president of International Office Moving Institute, IOME, um, basically been helping movers since 1987 in the commercial moving industry. He was former founder president of Peachtree Movers in Atlanta, uh huge metropolis there from 1976 to 2000. Uh the company did over 50,000 successful local office moves and earned Atlanta's Consumer's Choice Award. He's also invented for the industry, uh, developed a term called the boxless move method, patented and patented moving equipment to essentially support that. But also too, he's authored four books on commercial relocation, previously taught business and marketing at Georgia Highland State College. And he's also put out just a wealth of knowledge out there for businesses, but specifically movers today. Uh, a different take on the industry. This gentleman absolutely obsessed about it, got it fixed. And I am really super motivated to hear the end of this episode. Guys, furthermore, Mr. Ed Katz, thank you so much for joining me, sir.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Well, let's give the facts a little bit more than all these wonderful accolades you just gave me. Um, first of all, you got a hundred points this morning for your DEI qualifications when you do work with the federal government because you hired somebody from the nursing home here. So you're gonna we're gonna make sure you get your credit for that. And you said legend. I think I'm a legend

Meet Ed Katz And His Work

SPEAKER_02 3:55

in my own mind. I tell my friends, I'm the self-proclaimed, self-ordained minister of office moving. Just ask me, right? So I don't know, whatever that's worth. Thank you for the wonderful, wonderful introduction, though. You know, I was thinking in the middle of the night when I was on my third wee wee break, and you guys don't know what the hell I'm talking about because you're all young. You're like my grandchildren. That's all you are. But I was on my third wee we break, and I thought, you know who do you know who Sai really is? You are the Mike Rowe of the construction industry. You know who Mike Rowe is?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

Well, that's who you are, and you're a mentor, and you're helping all these other companies. Kudos to you. You're so lucky to have, I'm serious. Uh, that's who you are. Three o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning. That's what I was thinking about. Anyhow.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

I uh that would be unbelievable to get him onto this show. That would be the absolute pinnacle for here. And um I'm really a little taken back that you would even compare um us to him. But you know what? He did something that wasn't cool. Uh, he showed the uncool, inhabitable positions that people do every single day to feed their families. And there's a lot of that in the blue-collar world, but it's good paying work and it needs done, and it's going to be re reoccurring next month, and there's security there. And um, but no, I almost got to meet Mike a couple of weeks ago out there at Con Expo, and I didn't realize he was a keynote speaker, and we had flew out just a couple hours previous before he was speaking. So would have loved to get to meet him, but along the same message, Mike's got an unbelievable message of just trying to bring awareness. Now, I'm doing him more on an individual lane, kind of like yourself. And guys, that's where I got to meet Mr. Ed is through a uh mutual friend that is doing extremely well as well in his own lane. And I was kind of talking about him from the software perspective. You know, again, I'm just a ditch digger and now I'm learning all this media stuff, and I've got an unbelievable team helping me. But at the same time, it was trying to navigate the other things that we're doing in this media lane, trying to help the industry. How would it come across? How do you cover costs? And um, you know, that that uh similar acquaintance literally said, you have got to hang up the phone and call Mr. Ed. Mr. Ed has thought about this, obsessed about this, and has brought it to the market in so many different ways. So um take us back a little bit, sir, doing business in the 70s and 80s. I mean, a lot of these guys, including myself, uh, weren't born. Um, take us back through a little bit of that time because you know, I hear all the time that, man, has it always been like this? You know, chasing people for money and um invoice to invoice. But anyhow, start us off back there. Talk about a little bit about the moving expansion, maybe some struggles and strife that you dealt with over the years, but then we can kind of walk in the lane of, you know, you realizing through doing this and the pain points that you suffered, you're like, oh, everybody goes through this. I can help everybody. Give us give us the rundown, Mr. Ed.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Okay, can you hear me, by the way, everybody? Wonderful. Okay, because you're fading a little bit, just so you know.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

All

From Wall Street To Movers

SPEAKER_02 7:32

right. Anyhow, I my background is totally unrelated to what I ended up doing. I went to the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, where I got a master's degree. Look at me. Totally related to what I did, right? Ended up on Wall Street, worked on Wall Street in New York City for four years. I escaped from Wall Street, hated New York, moved to the Promised Land, Atlanta, Georgia. And for a year I was leasing office space. But while I was leasing office space, I think one of the most important things I tell my clients, who I try to be a mentor to, is I identified a need in the moving industry when I was leasing office space. I would get leads of companies that were moving, and I'd call up the movers and I'd say, hey, if I give you a lead and you end up moving, then would you pay me a small commission or five or so? Yeah, yeah. Sure. They never called them. They could care less about office moving, the movers in Atlanta. And there were hundreds of movers even back when I was starting my pilgrimage in Atlanta. So a year after floundering and failing in the real estate business, I said, I gotta do something. I know I'm totally unmanageable. I can't work for somebody else. I think I'd better start my own company. So I knew nothing about business, nothing at all. My degree was worthless. And what I found was the competition specialized in everything. They were household good movers, that's who they were. And when they were slow, they would fill in with office moving. So I had all these contacts with all these office buildings in Atlanta, and I said to myself, well, maybe I could leverage them and specialize in local office moving. So because I identified the need that there's inconsistent service, jobs don't finish on time for the price quoted, there's damage. They put companies out of business the next working day many times. They didn't have a formula for estimating accurately. All these things, I thought. So I think one of the most important things that I tell young or new entrepreneurs is if you can identify the need, that's like you're 90% of the way down the field towards the goal line. You really are. And that's what I did, identified the need. So after my floundering in the real estate business, I wrote a letter to every moving company in Atlanta and I said, look, I'll even work for free for two weeks if you want. I want to start my own company. Will you hire me? I'll be a mover helper, entry level. I just want to learn the business. One company hired me, and for I worked for free the first two weeks, and then I was there for six months, and I was a mover. I was a lumper, they called them. I did really terrible work. I mean, I just to this day I am not physically fit. I I don't know how I ever did it, but I did that for six months, and then November 1st, 1976, I started my moving company. My claim to fame is this I have made every frigate mistake you could possibly make in running a company. I mean, you name it, I have made every mistake known to man that you could possibly make, but I've made each and every one of them no more than once. And what I mean by that is this. Every day, I was like, I was like Job. I used to thank God that I didn't have all the problems happen at the same time on the same day. Because where I worked, suicide was not an option. You think I'm kidding you? You know how many times I was close to a nervous breakdown with problems that would happen? But think about it. Moving companies are always in warehouse type buildings. So it was a single-story building. If I try to commit suicide by jumping out of the window, the worst that would happen to me, I'd be flat on my back, staring at a hospital ceiling for the rest of my life, paralyzed from the neck down. So suicide was not an option. I had to figure out a way of fixing everything that was going wrong. So when we had a

Find A Need Then Specialize

SPEAKER_02 11:55

problem, it wasn't that we were going to eliminate problems. We were going to instead prevent problems from becoming crises. And let me give you one stupid example. So I'm in business about three or four months, and we're doing a move on a Friday evening. We have a truck loaded with furniture. Of course, it's an hour away from my warehouse. I get a call from my supervisor. Mr. Katz, we just blew the right front tire. We can't get to the destination. What do we do? Well, what do you do? There's no such thing as apps or Google or Internet. This is 1977. So I go through the yellow pages, and there's pages and pages of companies that sell tires in Atlanta, big city. And I'm calling them. You think anybody ever answered? Do you think anybody ever responded to my need for a tire company? Hell no. So what do I do next? I call a tow truck company. If any of you have ever called a tow truck company, I don't mean for your car, I don't mean three A's. I mean a tow truck company. You gotta wake, you have to wake Billy Bob up, right? He's got to have a few drinks to make sure he's awake. And he's gonna, it took two and a half hours for that truck to get there. By the way, do you think my guys were off the clock or on the clock? Do you think the customer was happy or unhappy? We towed the truck to the destination, the new location, right? They need the furniture. The guy's still on the it's like a taxicab, but it's like a thousand dollars an hour. I mean, back then that's what it was like. Anyhow, we get the truck unloaded and then they tow it back to our base. I learned a lesson. You gotta have a process and a system for every contingency that might happen. So, what

Build Systems For When Things Break

SPEAKER_02 13:55

did I do? I spent the next several days talking to managers and owners of tire companies. And I said to myself, I don't care what it costs to buy tires from this company. I want a company that can service me 24-7. So they're not if, but when this happens again, I'm gonna have a source I can call, a resource I can call who is gonna respond in a timely manner. I ended up being with that tower company, staying with them for most of my career as an owner of a moving company in Atlanta because they serviced me to death. And I did that with companies that would fix and repair trucks that had mobile units. So it's a process, it's a system. It gave me a life. So that's one of the most important things I'd like to tell you. The other thing I learned is this if you can identify the need as we did, we were going to specialize in local office moving. Now, initially, we did local residential and local office moving, but once we really started building up our core business, we became known as the office mover in Atlanta. And I learned that the moving industry applied the household good residential formula of cubic feet and pounds to office moves. And if there was an elevator, they said, we'll just add 10%. Or if there was a long, long, long carry or a loading dock or whatever, they added another 10%. Or if there were steps, you add another 20%, whatever. And I learned early on there is absolutely no relationship between cubic feet and pals, the residential formula, and estimating an office move. So here I am. Again, I really felt like I was Job. It's now six o'clock in the afternoon on a Sunday. We're supposed to finish this job at five o'clock. I'm out on the job running the job. We have two more truckloads to unload. My formula that I was using, which is what all the other movers were using, based on cubic feet and pounds, is way off. The customer's angry. My men want to mute me. Any of you have any crews out that ever want to mute me because weather conditions or the job itself or the hours that they're after? Well, my men want to leave and walk off the job. I'm now driving around the area. It's called North Lake Mall area. Anyone that's breathing, standing on a street corner, I'm saying, I'll pay you $12 cash an hour if you come help me. I load some trucks. I pick up two guys alloy. We get it fixed. We get it

Estimating Office Moves With Man Hours

SPEAKER_02 16:40

unloaded. Here again, identified the need. I got to find a formula that works. So what I did was I went outside the box. I stopped following the followers. I stopped following the followers. And I started studying other service industries. And I said to myself, wait a second, if they can build the Georgia Pacific building in downtown Atlanta that's 50 stories high, they know exactly how long it's going to take to excavate the foundation. They're going to know how long it's going to take to anchor the building to the ground with the piling. So they're going to know how long it's going to take to build a floor of iron and they're building 50 floors. Because all this stuff, the sheetrock, the steel, the glass, the skin of the building, that's not in somebody's warehouse. It's just in time. It's on a, it's either it's in the factory, it's on a truck on its way to the job. If they can figure that out, surely I could learn what they know in their service industries, and I could copy their formula and apply it to the moving industry, then I can estimate accurately. And that's what I did. I came up with a proprietary formula. I copied what they do in your industry. You probably know how long it takes to excavate. And that's it's all called man hours, which is a foreign nerd in the movie industry. What do you mean man hours? Yeah, because it's a man's world. Then it's not woman hours, and it's not men hours, it's man hours, dummy. But anyhow, AEI doesn't like Ed Cass very much. I just want you to know. But anyhow, that aside, I came up with this formula, and I'll tell you, 97.6% of the time, our final our final bill was what our estimate was. Our jaws finished on time for the price quoted. We had the reputation of you could be sure that you'll be open for business the next working day if you hire P Street movers, all because of the formula, which is in my online training that I teach movers, half the time, the 13 and a half hours of training, half of the time is spent on this proprietary formula. And it really works. It's all based on man hours. So you got to be able to estimate accurately. If you're an entrepreneur and you own a company and you're a sheetrock company or you're lying, you're laying pipe or you're building a house, you better know how long it's going to take in terms of man hours so you can price it accurately. If you don't have a formula, see the way they did it in the moving industry, you worked on the back of a truck for five years as a lumper, as a mover, and then you transitioned into sales. You had that experience, and you could just look at the job. My men who never learned my formula, who did these 50,000 local office moves, they could walk into an office without my formula and tell me what I already would figure out on paper. But think about it, not everybody's going to be able to have the luxury of working in construction, laying pipe, building a house, doing for all those years so that you now can quote jobs and book and book them, right? So the formula gave me a vehicle for taking successful B2B type salesperson, somebody that sold commercial insurance, somebody that sold telephones to companies, somebody who sold office furniture, somebody who leased office space, and I could say, listen, let me teach you my estimating formula. You don't have to work on the back of a truck. Well, all of a sudden that opened up a whole new world. I didn't have to hire people that came up through the

Hiring For Mindset Not Industry Habits

SPEAKER_02 20:35

industry who many times, you know, trade people, some of them have closed minds. Would you believe that? Yeah. If there are guys out there that are not open to new ways of doing things, oh well, in my industry, you know, we had people that, you know, when I worked at Unard of Van Lise, we didn't do it that way. Or when I worked at North American Van Lise, we didn't do it that way. I stopped hiring people that worked for other moving companies because they didn't want to grow with us. And I used to have to say to people, I love you. You're a great employee. You show up for work. But if you don't do it our way, you're gonna either grow with us or without us. And then isn't that a sad thing? But anyhow, that's just a sidebar. So you gotta have you gotta have some way, somebody's gotta teach you how to estimate the job, whether it's you're a moving company or you're in the construction industry. If you're just you know shooting from the hip, you're a you're gonna wake up one day and you may get a job that because you were the lowest bidder, and I mean really the lowest bidder. And now what are you gonna do? And you it's not a five hundred dollar job, it could be several hundred thousand dollar job, and now what are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_00 21:56

No, I think you you hit some really Great points home. Number one, obviously, estimation, and you're kind of like standing there going, Well, I don't really have any other system to follow. And stating that stop following the followers that I think I'm going to use throughout this year. Um, and a lot of things that we're doing on the media side, we kind of have pioneered. There's not a whole lot of commercial construction guys wanting to sit behind a microphone and tell them their their whole business scheme to you. Like there's just not as many people doing that. But everybody's following somebody, right? Well, so and so across town and doesn't do that, or well, these people don't do that. Well, he does it, but yeah, that's him. So, but you're exactly right. And learning that estimation process is unbelievably crucial before you even do the work, before you get there, before you labor the work, all the things is to have a good understanding of your estimate. But you know, you were saying your guys had gone, you could go into an office space and just bam, look at it, know what's going to take, and your numbers are gonna work out. Well, that's that's also too a testament of you figuring out early that, oh, maybe I don't have to move everything in the moving industry. Maybe I can just move a certain type of certain scope of movement. And, you know, I I can talk about myself from the pipe side of things, you just immediately think dirt bolts right that together because you're a civil guy in asphalt and curb and concrete, and you can get so quickly caught up in a whole bunch of different lanes that's pulling your attention and focus in so many different areas. And I did that. I 100% did that. But in the last three years, I have really cut and carved, got us back down to the pipeline, concentrated on being the best pipe guy in the area. Doesn't matter by far by none. Um, but it's it's riches in the niches and stick to one lane. Like you, these industries, you know, say you're an electrician. Well, there's a difference between a service call electrician and a guy that goes out there and ropes houses. Concrete guys, well, there's a difference in the guy that pours a flat sidewalk and a guy that pours an elevated manhole. Um, plumbers, I can go on and on and on. What I'm saying is, guys, is you pick an industry, then just like Mr. Ed said, find that lane that best fits for you. And if there's a need and a problem, and you can take care of that need and problem with a system that you can find repeatable, man, you've got half the like 90%, as Ed said, like the battle is already done. You just got to figure out the processes to repeat, getting them in and out of that door. And I, you know, making mistakes, that's the coolest thing about this show is I bring people every single week, talk a little lot about my mistakes, but to hear other people that are so prestigious like yourself have learned from mistakes, but only learning that mistake one time. Don't get me wrong, are you gonna hover around that problem again? You absolutely are, but from the experience of you flat screwing it up the first time is not gonna let you get to that point and make that mistake again. Now, you may make a version of that mistake, but hey, let's point to our system. Where, how did we get to this point? Maybe we've got to adjust the system that we put in place. They're living systems. They're not one and done, this does it all. It's just not possible in our world. Things are changing. I mean, the development of AI and everything off in the last five years is literally just game changing everything from the administrative side. But back to your point, Mr. Ed, of estimating the job. I think what a lot of guys get so caught up, they don't even, number one, understand their cost of what it takes to get through a day, a week, a month. I was one of those guys till a couple of years ago of actually not semi-knowing your cost, not like kind of knowing it. I kind of know it for years. But I'm talking about every wire nut, every little fork to a restaurant is what I'm trying to talk. I'm talking about minimalistic costs, and you better know what it costs you and be able to cover that somehow with an overhead or burden or or whatever it may be. But estimating the job, getting it down to a formula, and you know, you started running with this formula and probably thought, and I'm hoping you take it from here, is hmm, I think other people could probably benefit from this formula, huh?

SPEAKER_02 26:48

Yeah, well, not just yet, because the first five years we took over Atlanta, we owned the office moving market. Would you believe that? Everything I touched turned to gold. Remember, self-proclaimed, self-ordained, minister of office moving, that's all I was. But I forgot God had given me a middle

Losing Market Share To A Giant

SPEAKER_02 27:05

name, Job. And one day I wake up and there's a company that came from Chicago called Neptune Moving. And it wasn't fair because they were ten times larger than we were. They had special trailers they called pup trailers, they were like 30 feet long, built just for office moves with flat floors, and our biggest move that we had done was like a $25,000, $30,000 move. This company moved Sears into their headquarters in Chicago. Oh wow. Where I owned 200 four-wheel dollies, they owned 2,000. Where I had 20 employees, they put 150 on the street. And then worse, the worst thing that happened, not only did they have the reputation, they had all these trucks, they had deep deep pockets. When they first came to Atlanta with their 10 trailers that were built just for office moving, they were just driving them around up 75, up 85, around the beltway, just visibility, visibility, visibility. They were 10% cheaper than Peace Street Movers, my company. So I wake up one day, and it's not fair. I mean, I'm here, I I recognize the need. I came up with the floor wheel, but I couldn't. I mean, who would you hire? The company had a stellar reputation that was really a company that was huge, that had assets and resources, and were never booked. I mean, they were never at capacity because they had all this capacity and 10% cheaper. Or would you hire the guy with a peach on the side of his logo in his truck? Overnight, so overnight, I lost my market share. And I tried advertising on the radio, and I tried magazine advertising, newspaper advertising. Nothing worked. And I, those of you who don't know me, well, you nobody knows me. I'm a very spiritual person. I had just become a Christian, born and raised Jewish, but I had just become a Christian. And I said, this is not fair, right? And I really have to give credit where credit's due. I am very spiritual. And what happened was I kept having a vision of something else was going on in my mind because for the I was so desperate. Like I tried everything and nothing worked. Oh, we went door to door and handed out flyers, coupons. Nothing worked till finally I tried something I never tried in my life before.

Listening Sparked The Boxless Move

SPEAKER_02 30:01

I listened to the customer. I mean, really listen. And for years, the five years I had already been in business, every time we quote a job, somebody would say to me, Hey, we're just moving from one floor to the other, or we're moving from one side of the floor to the other, or we're just moving six miles down the road. They all said six miles down the road. I don't know why. But anyhow, do we have to empty our furniture? And I said, like all the other sheep and all the other followers and all the other movers, yes, you have to empty the furniture so that when we all it up to get it through the doorway and onto the elevator, it doesn't go all over the floor and doesn't destroy the furniture. Of course, you have to empty it. Well, I heard that hundreds of times in the five years that I was in business when I was successful. But why would I pay attention to the customer? Because I didn't need to, I didn't have to. I owned the market. But no more. So I really prayed, and I'm telling you, this came through divine intervention. And this, believe me, I'm just an average person. I'm not smart. I kept having this vision of inflating airbags inside of desk drawers to immobilize the contents so that we can move the contents in the furniture. And not only did I envision that, but I saw a bottle jack attached to an engine hoist. Like, what the heck am I talking about now? I'm not mechanically inclined, but I saw how they lifted an engine out of a car and I said, I wonder if I could somehow pick lateral file cabinets up. Everybody had lateral file cabinets that had all their confidential personnel files and company files and everything. No such thing as a cloud for you kids that don't know what a file cabinet is. Everything was hard paper. They had hundreds and hundreds of lateral file cabinets. Everybody had lateral file cabinets, but you had to totally empty them. Or you, if you try to move them with the contents in them, they could weigh a thousand pounds. They could torque and be ruined so that every time you open and close a drawer, it would stick a rub, or you close one drawer, the next one opens. So you had to totally empty them. So I started telling my fellow employees about my vision of the airbags in this device for moving lateral file cabinet is full. And what do you think they all said? Like, great idea. What do you think? They were all negative. So the first thing I learned is when you have a new idea, unless you have a mentor like Cy, you don't tell anybody, because most people are miserable. You don't realize it. I hate to be so cynical, but I'm allowed, I'm 81 years old. They're jealous of you. They don't want you to be happy. They're gonna be negative. No, I don't think that's gonna work. So everybody told me it's not gonna work, not gonna work. Anyhow, finding somebody to make the airbags, I went to a waterbed manufacturer. I had him an outrageous amount of money make me two or three prototype miniature waterbeds. I got, I thought maybe high air compression, blow them up. No, I used a commercial hairdryer. Let you blow wind. And I used, I made a snorkel out of it, and I, when nobody was looking, I inflated inside the desk drawers with contents in them, got two movers that turned it up on a dolly, shook it, opened it up, nothing fell out. It worked. The I mean, if you saw the original prototype, it doesn't look like what I ended up with a year later, but anyhow, it worked. And then back in the day, I spent like eight or ten thousand dollars on the first prototype of this spider crane. I called it spider crane, because it had two 14-inch diameter suction cups, and we're going to create a vacuum and suck this cabinet off the floor to pick it up straight without tipping it or torque it, putting it on a special low-gravity steel dolly. Well, here I'm on a rule because these space carbers are really working.

Prototypes Fail Then Finally Work

SPEAKER_02 34:10

I mean, I'm starting to get clients again because everybody had a desk, no modular furniture. Everybody had a desk. And I'm starting to take business away from this big giant mover, Neptune. But now I'm on a roll. So $10,000 later, about a year and a half later, I have I call all my employees, front office and movers into the warehouse. I'm gonna show them. I have a lateral file cabinet fully loaded, weighs about a thousand pounds, and I lower these two giant suction cups over the top with what looks like a miniature engine hoist with a bottle jack. You could have heard a pin drop. I mean, everybody's like, wow, this guy's a genius. And I, yeah, you're right, you must know Ed Cats, right? And I start using the bottle jack with the lever, and I'm pumping him out. Do any of you are any of you old enough to remember the movie with this with the cone heads with what was the name of that movie? Dan Ackroyd. Do you remember the cone heads?

SPEAKER_00 35:19

I'm not a movie guy.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

There's probably somebody listening screaming at us right now. Can you imagine a head looking like an upside-down cone? Whatever. That's what happened to the top of that lateral foul cabinet. The suction cups worked beautifully, and it went and the top bowed and bent. That was the first time I ever tried to do it. And I did in front of an audience. And all these movers and my fellow employees, they're like, Oh, that look at that. They thought it was so funny, hilarious. And I am sick as a dog, I can't believe I'm gonna throw up. I'm so sad. I put spent all this money and I destroyed the top of this cabinet. And destroy the cabinet. Believe me, if you don't think I'm down on my knees that night praying to God, like you wouldn't believe. I mean, I says it's just not fair. This is what you go through when you're outside the box and you're trying to innovate. You have failures. Was it who invented the light bulb uh Edison? Edison, Thomas Edison, right? I think? Yeah, I believe so. Anyway, I have a reason not to remember. But anyhow, Thomas Edison. 10,000 failures till he got the right one. So, anyhow, I had a vision after praying so hard to put something flat in between the cups so that when the cabinet tried to bend and bow, that flat piece of wood would prevent it from bowing. Without an audience, the next day, another lateral file cabinet, nobody's looking, filled to the brim with paper, it worked perfectly. I ended up calling that the spider crane, and the airbags that went inside the desk drawers were called space gobblers.

Differentiate Hard Then Charge More

SPEAKER_02 37:05

So the next thing I learned was you have to differentiate yourself in the marketplace. We were the only moving company, actually, in the world at the time, that could move the contents in the furniture instead of the contents and the furniture. I called it the boxless move. Do you know that two years later, Neptune went bankrupt? They went out of business. Because who would you rather move with? Somebody that made you pack up, put you out of business a day or two before the move, mix up all your files, use cardboard containers, boxes to fill landfills and killed trees, or somebody who came in who saved the environment, guaranteed no mix up or lost files. You could work right up until the time the movers arrived to do the move, and you're open for business the next working day. And guess what? Our price was double everybody else's. Double. Not 10% more, but double because we differentiated ourselves in the marketplace. So all of a sudden, I got the formula, I got the boxless move. All this is coming together. I got these processes. So I end up, it's so funny how life is. I never planned, if it hadn't been for Neptune, nearly driving me out of business, there would be no Spider Croin and Space Scholars. Think about it. Adversity builds character. That's why I'm such a character, right? Because I've had I've been Job all my life. I mean, you wouldn't believe. But God did it because He wanted innovation. He wanted it to change, and it did change. So I have no visions of selling this equipment to anybody. In fact, I only use it for my moving company in Atlanta. Next thing I know, if you know anything about Atlanta, it's not a headquarters town. Yeah, Coca-Cola is there, but other than that, it's not a headquarters town. It's a regional hub. So what happens is people climb in the corporate ladder. They work in Atlanta and then they get promoted. They go to Chicago headquarters, they go to New York City headquarters, they go to Los Angeles headquarters. So the next thing I find out, five, six years later, I'm getting calls from movers in Chicago and Los Angeles and San Francisco and Seattle and New York City and Detroit. This guy, we're bidding on his job. He says he's not emptying the furniture. He doesn't, we're not going to get the move unless we buy that crane device of yours or those water beds you use. I said, What are you talking about? He

Customers Created A New Product Business

SPEAKER_02 39:45

said, That what's your box is smooth. There's some big moves we're bidding on, and they say we have to move the way you're moving, the way he moved when he was in Atlanta. Now he's in all these other respective cities. Can you believe the customer drove business to me? Now, now, not only am I the owner of a moving company, I'm selling spider cranes and thousands of space cobblers to movers, not just all over the United States, but all over Canada and the United Kingdom. How the heck did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 40:20

The good Lord was blessing.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

I have a master's degree in public administration and urban renewal.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

What do I know? How'd this happen?

SPEAKER_02 40:33

I listened to the customer.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

What a story, literally.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

I mean, I mean, I wish I could take credit for all this, but you can see why I'm so spiritual.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

But oh 100% same here.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

God deserves something else I gotta tell you. Okay. It just came across my mind. Believe me, I have been humbled many, many, many times. One of the worst things of all was you know how in a business you're supposed to have with a triangle, you know, a triangle like this, and you're at the top, right side, and then you have managers below you,

The Bathroom Moment And Delegation

SPEAKER_02 41:10

and you have more managers below them, and then you have the rank and file, right? And you tell the managers what happened to say, well, imagine the moving company with a lot of employees. And maybe I shouldn't tell you this because you're gonna think I was so smart until I tell you this. Our company was an upside-down triangle. In other words, everybody reported to the self-proclaimed, self-ordained minister of office moving. I was the grand moveti. That's who I was. I was so full of myself, they wouldn't even write a letter without my approving it. They wouldn't make a decision. I'm getting calls from my two salespeople 12 times a day. Mr. Katz, what do we do? I am my nickname is now no life. I don't have a process for managing people. Why? Because I would never thought how to be a manager. I mean, I'm I have the answer. I just know everything, right? You can tell by my big mouth right now, right? So the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm in, we have a big men's room, right? I'm in the men's room. I'm sitting on the can. My sales, one of my sales guys comes in. Mr. Katz, are you in there?

SPEAKER_01 42:25

I don't even want him to know I'm in there, let alone what I'm doing, right? I mean, what the hell? I can't even go to the bathroom without.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

I have a question. I couldn't believe it. That was the straw that broke Campbell's back. I said, you know what? I it's my fault. I have created, I have created mentally handicapped employees. It's my fault. I mean, if you had a choice of maybe making a decision that was wrong and being held accountable or having the boss make the decision, what are you gonna do? You're not gonna make any choices or decisions. That's when I learned through a mentor, from a mentor, the seven most important words in running a company. You want to know what they are? I do. From that moment forward, when I got out of that men's room, and the one of my other employees came up to me and asked me a question, what do I do? I answered this way. I don't know what you think. That's seven words. Do you ever hear the expression, or ever have you ever gone hunting and and at nights have to see how deer stare and headlights? That was the reaction I got from my employees. It's like it was almost like they got blindsided. It's like they didn't know what to say, what do what to do. And I said to them, from now on, it's the new Mr. Katz. I'm entitled to being able to go to the bathroom without being rudely interrupted. And I'll tell you something, and I learned over the years, it's really hard to do what I did. It's really hard to let them take it takes extra time. But they were smarter than I gave them credit for. They're the ones touching the customers, the movers, the bookkeepers, the salespeople, the customer service people, not it cats. And they had great ideas. So I used to sell I used to tell them, don't come to me with a problem unless you have at least three options as to what to do. I swear to you. And I'm not going to swear unless I really mean this. This is the truth. Not only did I teach them to come to me with three options, then I would say at the end before I sold the company, out of the three, what do you think is the best one? And they were right. To this day, I have a former employee. I'm going to tell you his name. His name is Ian Robbins. He's works for another moving company in Atlanta. He's been in the industry all these years since I hired him, since 1981. He's got to be about 62 years old now. To this day, Ian will call me two or three times a year. Mr. Katz, I have a situation. This is a former employee, but I'm still his mentor, right? I'm still his friend. I'm still Mr. Katz to him. Come on, Ian, I'm Ed Katz. But anyhow, Mr. Katz, I have a situation, which to me is a problem. And he tells me the situation. And then he says to me, here are my options. And then I finally say, and what do you think you're gonna do? Well, I was thinking of Ian, why do you even waste your time calling me? I'm honored and flattered. You're right. And well, I just want to make sure Mr. Cass because I don't yell. Can you believe to me? That's excuse me, that's that's management. Hey, how do you like my RFK junior voice impersonation? How I just flipped. See what happened to you.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

No, you're totally fine, but you're you're exactly right, sir. It's building that leadership. And I had that exact point myself in business where I had 30 plus employees. This wasn't too long ago, three, three, four years ago. And I literally could not set my phone down. It would give me a heart attack because the next call, the next fire, the next question, the next answer, the next solution, that's all holding up and in my mind, well, I you're holding this up, you're holding up that. You've got to be able to answer this. They they they can't answer that. And I built this methodology in my head that you have to be in the middle of absolutely everything because that's how you control it. And what I didn't understand is I was building this flat archy. And here's Psi, you know, or a reference of your upside-down triangle, Mr. Ed. But here's Psi, and then I got everybody else below me. Just a one casted plane. And well, that that doesn't help anything. That all bottlenecks to me, and you create, and you know, it was sorry, last week we were talking about how ownership and leadership gets in the way of growth of the company and the business, and of most importantly, a lot of times, the culture of the people. Because while you know, Mr. Ed and myself are doing that exact thing, well, that's really good for how we feel. But the rest of our team's pissed off and they're asking, why does he have to be involved with this? Like, does he not see we do this, this, and this? You're telling me we can't say go left or right? Like, this isn't gonna cause an implosion here. Like, why do we have to run this surround? And and then my team, you know, I started challenging them. I learned, um, you know, you referenced learning to be a manager. Um, and it takes a decade. Uh I have been through it. Uh, I can tell you I've got kind of an idea what I'm doing now. And I always claim to be a people's person. I mean, always. I can walk up, shake your hand, talk with you, no big deal. But and and carry on a conversation like we've been friends for 10 years. But at the same time, I you just get so worned down with people. Even an extra, you know, I think the word is extrovert, um, not opposite of introvert, but now I've become an introvert because I literally, I gotta go, you know, back then I was having to run and hide just to get 15 minutes of my, you know, not a decision or not a question, or and and I wasn't getting anything done that I needed to get done because I was too busy working on in-the-business stuff that I should have never been involved with. And so just like you did, sir, um, you know, you started, you just started. You started writing processes down. All right, team, what do we think about this process? What do we think about this plant? Well, I think it's stupid. Well, thank you, Bobby. I needed that, I needed that input. Hey, at least he's giving us some input. Why do why do you think it's stupid, Mr. Bob? Well, this and this is gonna cause us this. Okay, but did you realize when you give me this and this information, the bookkeepers, the estimator, they get all this information in real time to give them a better opportunity, maybe to bid the job differently because you coded your labor or a little bit differently and it took you longer than the estimate. Maybe it wasn't your fault. Maybe it was the estimator. Maybe we haven't had any production rates come back to him. But did you know when you code your daily log and code your costs in for the day that the bookkeeper can now bring the PL forward halfway through the month or whatever the case may be? I just a lot of times I don't think teams understand how much they affect one another. And especially in the construction trade, you have office and you got field. And it is this the entire time. And especially if you don't have leadership at the top that can go gain the respect of the field and go jump in the middle of the field, just like you, Mr. Ed, when a move gone wrong, guess where Mr. Ed was going? He was going to take care of the move, to take care of the customer, take care of his crew, take care of everybody. Well, that's what good working owners do, but you're just taking time away. Was there a system? Was there a process? How did we get here? Not just topical. I'm talking about root of the problem. And guess what? A lot of times, just like I said a couple of weeks ago, guys, the problem's you. Half the time, the problem is you. And being able to identify it, get out of the way, come to a round table and go, guys, I'm sorry. I didn't even realize that you guys were building resentment on something that I was standing in the way from that I didn't even know that was this big of a problem until Estimator came and brought it to light to me. So building those teams, but learning how to be a manager to effectively not just manage the systems and the structures and the accountabilities of those such, but managing the individual people within those systems. They need to be taught to differently. They need to be motivated differently, they need to be reprimanded differently. Like everything's what's important to me is probably not as important to you, Mr. Ed. Like that's just natural, right? We all have our own importances. And when you start finding out those personal importances, you can really start self-elevating and empowering your team by doing things outside of talking about the job most of the time. But it's the belief that, you know, your former uh employee, Ian, he feels that reassurance when he's going to make that decision. And that's what a lot of folks need. They they can figure it out themselves, but they need that reassurance. But what they don't realize a lot of times, Mr. Ed, is that we ain't got a freaking clue either. We're just guessing. And so all we can do is go back and go, all right, experience lens, where does this take me? What happened last time when we were in this situation and what bit me? And so where I was trying to travel with all of this, sir, um, is that, you know, when you start producing out in the field, start dealing with that team, jiving with the office to get that culture, it's all about culture and getting them to mesh and making sure they understand that their job duty affects this person's job duty, but it may not be in the way that you think. Whether she's complaining because you make her or the bookkeeper's complaining at you because you could you approve all your costs a day before she's got to have the report in and she's got to stay three hours late and she misses a ball game or a whatever the case may be, but that's that's what they don't know. And as more you identify those problems as a team, flesh them out, build systems and processes as a team, don't just sit there in your freaking office, crank out 80 of them, go, hey guys, there's your playbook, run it. And because it just it's not successful that way. So, with that being said, um truly, the the one thing I uh I want to kind of put a door in that, and I wanted to kind of go back to your spider cranes and your space gobblers for just a minute, because in that moment, sir, that you're on your knees praying, absolutely breaking you down to nothing. It's so funny, though, how the Lord works because in the moment that you thought you were completely out, you were rowed off, you were done, you were going bankrupt, everybody that worked for you gonna have to go find a job, the bank's pissed, everybody's gonna hate you, and you thought your life was over, was the exact moment that actually took and set you apart, not just here in your market, not just regionally, but across the entire planet. And I hope that's encouragement for somebody today to hear that because a lot of times when you're running this business thing, you get five, 10 years down the road, and there's still things that you haven't really propped up for the stool yet, per se, but you're just running and you're running, and you're like, man, this isn't gonna ever get any better. And then all of a sudden this huge catastrophic problem comes, and you're just like, we're done. We're just done. No, I would encourage you to turn to the big man above, say a prayer, because there's a reason he's brought you here. Because there's something that he's trying to show you. It may be adversity, it may hurt real bad, but adversity builds who you are. Um, amen. Adversity builds character, but I just wanted to shine light on that little segment. Um, because that is so cool. And and to see that, man, yeah, this ginormous, huge guy comes in. And and the other last thing I guess I want to mention is that you were dealing in market saturation in the 1980s and 90s, and you know what I mean? Right. We're up here in uh you know 26, and everybody's talking wants to pull that car. Well, there's just so many people doing it, there's just so many people, people are just going, especially in my world, they're just going and buying

Mission Statement As Daily Management Tool

SPEAKER_00 55:05

a skid steer and everybody's a dirt guy. We got to figure out how to beat them. You got to figure out how to be better than them, offer a different service, but not getting away too far from the main service. So that it's just unbelievably crazy to sit here and think about how you felt in that moment as you're lifting that crane up with a suction cup, knowing everybody around you is gonna think you're an absolute moron. And then it turns into what it did and made you who you are, but then you started helping others along the way learn all of these other valuable mistakes that you're like, hmm, well, I don't have it all figured out, but I got this piece figured out. Let me let me help others. So that's that's just too cool.

SPEAKER_02 55:50

Do you know anybody in your industry that has said to you, as a if they're a manager, that they say, I'm not gonna babysit grown men. If he can't do it, I'm gonna find someone who can. Is that only unique to the moving industry? Because we have operations managers that I've trained over the years that tell me that what I just said, they're not gonna babysit grown men. If he can't do it, I'm gonna find someone who can. Is that ever said in your industry too? Oh, yeah. Well, let me tell you something. That's not a manager because that's called delegating. That's not managing. I teach and preach. Managing means you, manager, are personally responsible for the performance and the behavior of the people that you're owed. That's what I'd say. And one of the things I did as a manager, the last three years of my life at Peace Removers were wonderful because I had all these processes and procedures in place. I was Mr. Quality Control Guy, so I'd go out on jobs and show up. Do you think they liked it when I showed up on a job? Hell no, they didn't like Mr. Katz in their face. And I noticed there are two lateral file cabinets sitting in the office that are full. And I look inside the truck, and the spider crane is still on the back of the truck, and I'm asking myself, wait a second, we're at the new location, they move them full. And the spider crane is still padded and tied up on the back of the truck. So I go and I learn you don't ever do it in front of an audience. I call the supervisor aside, I play dumb. I say I'm confused. I see the spider crane on the truck, but I see the two lateral file cabinets in the office. Well, Mr. Katz, it was only two of them, so when necessary. I said, Let me tell you something. We have convinced this customer that the only reason that that we got this move is because we were the only mover that can move it full safely. You just moved it like all the other movers that don't have the spider train. I made the pain of doing it right less painful than being humiliated by me. I'm not going to tell you how I humiliated them. By the way, I never cursed and never yelled at my employees. Look at me for a second. I look at them in the eyes. I don't know if you can see me right now, but I look at them in the eyes. I said, What is our policy for lateral file cabinets, removing lateral file cabinets? And I look at them like this, and then I'd shut up. And I'd stare at them, and I'd stare at them, and I'd stare at them, and I didn't have to say a word. They wanted to crawl inside their skins because they humiliated them. And they knew darn well what the policy was. And they knew I mean I can give you hundreds of examples like that. I'm not going to bore you. So then I I taught the supervisors, you are responsible for their performance. I go out and they put a wheelchart under the tire, under the rear tire. You ready for this step? They put it on the back side of the tire instead of the front, and the truck's the nose is lower than the the back. So in other words, they put it on the wrong side of the tire. And I have the supervisor come down to the street and I point it out to him. He says, I'll go move it. I said, Stop right now. He says, Well, I told Lucius to put the wheel chalk out. And I said, And what do I tell you? Who's tell me what your job, why you get more money than the mover helpers? Tell me, Philip, why do you get more money? I'm responsible for the that's right. You need to go behind them all the time. Because if that truck rolls, that wheel chalk behind the tire is not gonna stop this big truck. They got it. And then tied to that, interestingly enough, was our mission statement. You know, a lot of companies have these three, four paragraph mission statements. Hell no, we keep it simple. You know what ours was? Become the most user-friendly office mover in Atlanta. That's it. And you think that's all it was? I'd go up to my employees on an irregular but consistent basis. A day didn't go by where I didn't go up to an entry-level mover, a foreman, a driver, a supervisor, a bookkeeper, a customer service person, a salesperson. And I say, I go into the bookkeeper's office. Lou, what's our mission statement? I know Mr. Katz to become the most user-friendly office mover in Atlanta. Good for you. Do you have any ideas? Well, actually, Mr. Katz, I do. You know, we do all the moves for Holiday Inn headquarters, all the moves for Rockwell, all the moves for Sun Trust. And they always tell us we're we're late in getting their bills out. They give us the lion's share of our revenue and profits. Maybe when we do jobs for them, we could put their billing on top of the pile, even though they were last in, we can have them first out because they are who they are. I said, Lou, that's brilliant. See, mission statement, most user-friendly. The other jobs are important, but not as important as those three who gave us like 40% of our profits, right? I I go up to my movers all the time. They don't even want to look in my eyes when I talk to them. Dexter. What's our mission statement? To become user. No, not to become user. To become easy to do business with. Well, Mr. Katz, actually, I did. You know, our space gobblers, our airbags that we insert aside a desk drawers. I figured out a way of moving blueprint files, flat files, with mylar prints in them full safely. I said, no, come on, Dexter. No, really, and he showed me, I couldn't believe it. So now not only can we move lateral foul cap, I mean that's full with space gobblers. We got a giant move for Southern Bell, which was now Bell South, which became ATT, correct? We got a move for them. They had 46 flat files, three stacked high. We moved them all full. They couldn't believe it. It took us a day to prepare them with space gobblers. I used it like 800 space gobblers to fill in all the drawers. We did it. We got the move because of that. That was Dexter Cook's idea. So my point is the mission statement was a tool, and I would go up to them all the time. They were, as I said, they're the ones that touch the customer. They had these ideas. Isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:28

It's truly amazing. And you know, it's a testament, Mr. Ed. Yeah, you know, you have your mission statement. For years, you know, I heard about core values and mission statements, and um you just used it in the perfect way of an example. And I didn't realize how big of a tool it can be for us at the top, because not only it's now an accountability piece, and it's something we agreed to together. Like when I sat down, did our core values, brought it to the team. Anything we need to change, there's seven core values there from family first, safety, accountability drives excellence. I can go on. But now, as okay, somebody screwed up and ordered too much gravel or whatever the case may be, and I have to go out to side and we got to have a talk about it, or the superintendent's pissed off, or whatever the case may be. Go out there, okay, give me the scenario. Well, now that doesn't really sound like core value number three and number four, does it? So, where did we fall short as leaders that our core values, this is who we are trying to be as people and how we're trying to run this company? How did that representation of us, back to them, fit all of these core values? Well, it didn't, sir. Exactly. So we need to fix us. Now, now that we've addressed us, now we've addressed, you know, hey, we didn't put this in the documentation log or we didn't get this RFI in, or whatever it is. We've got that handled. Now let's go deal with the problem together. We've dealt with us, it's not always a them. I feel people are, and I was too. I was so quick to point the it's you, it's you, it's you, it's you, it's you, it's you. Yeah, guys, there's three fingers pointing right back at you every time you're pointing. Check here first, start here first, especially when it's dealing with people and leadership, because it's so much easier to come into a conversation to have a base point, a mission statement, a core value, whatever it may be, and go, hey, we've agreed on this together. This is who we are, this is who we represent ourselves. But it also, to your point, Mr. Ed, it brings great thinking ability to them because it kind of takes the weight of, well, should I do this or not? Well, that's not a part of our core. This would be, right? And so, but when they come up with a new idea or something that, and I'm not just talking about in the field, I'm talking about systematically, I'm talking about procedurally. I'll get a phone call once a week at this point. One supers will call me. Hey, what do you think about this? Let me just run this by you, and and and and this and that, and this and that, and this should affect Dylan, but how would this affect bookkeeping? And I don't know that. Can you tell me that? And I'm like, I just get so pumped up because the years we have spent working on the culture, working on the systems, working on the processes, are really truly starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Uh, another example, um, more systems and processes. Uh, a big thing in our world is if uh whatever bucket is estimated on that excavator, better be on that excavator when we go to put whatever we're installing in the ground. That one thing can swing a job. If you're running a two foot ditch, backfilled and compacted with base rock, well, then you just added 12 inches for a thousand feet, but you just swung the whole job. And so so to counteract that, I've got an estimate. Here sitting here talking about man, we're going to be tight on this job. I bid this job eight or nine months ago. I've kind of gone back for to them for some, you know, back and forth material hikes, et cetera, but we really can't get any more on it. It fits us, goes to the PM, not to me, goes to the PM, discusses it with Jesus and really materializes this. Then they come to me and go, hey, look, so I think we're we're short on this job here and here. And this is before we've ever stepped foot on the job, which is so cool. These guys are coming to me and going, hey, um, it's bid with a two-foot, we've got a one-foot bucket for that machine. And I'm pretty sure we'll be safe that'll that'll shrink our gravel, that'll be able to do this or do that. And I'm like, well, wait a minute, that's great. Well, what does that save us? Well, about the money we were looking for. And I'm like, before we even started the job, we fixed a big old crisis here that we would have been looking at the end of the job and going, man, why do we lose money? You know, but it's driving those systems. Just that's all I was trying to do here, guys, is drive Mr. Ed's point home. Is that all of the things that you're begging and waiting for to happen with your team, they're just waiting on you to do it. And you got to be the first one to do it. You got to put these systems and these processes in place and then hold yourself accountable to them. Watch your team watch you hold yourself accountable and go, guys, dang it, we set this system up and I totally kiboshed it. I apologize. Walk me through so I can see what your end result's gonna be so I know for next time that I don't cause this frustration. And it's those little things. And a lot of people, to your point, Mr. Ed, they they look at it and they're oh, that's a waste of time. That's a way I got bigger things. No, no, no, no. How wrong you are. That is the most valuable time you can be spending throughout the day is one-on-one working with a superintendent, one-on-one working with an estimator, PM, or you know, lumpers, or whoever it may be in your trade, the more they can learn from you at the top, specifically detailed and cleared information, the better they can be throughout every single day

Culture Between Field And Office

SPEAKER_00 1:08:10

striving for success. So um, those are some unbelievable good points, sir.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:16

The way I rewarded Lou and Dexter and all the other ones that gave me ideas, I wrote them a handwritten personal note. And I found out many times, and I learned this from a mentor. This is not it, Katz's idea. They took those notes home. Lou showed it to her husband and her friends. Dexter showed it to his wife and his girlfriend. Right. But anyhow, look up to my world. That meant so much to them. And I would write those notes and letters, and they that meant something to them. I don't know how much time we have, but I would like to mention one thing. If anybody would like a free copy of my most successful book, you're gonna say, well, it doesn't apply to us. We're in the construction industry. It does apply. You're in a service industry. This is all about a service industry. I can send them a PDF copy. If they email me, I'll be more than happy to give them a PDF copy they can read on their computer or on their phone if they're if they're interested. I'd be more than happy. It's got a lot of nuggets of information, just like our conversation today, Sai, that would I think be definitely applicable to what you guys do for a living.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:34

I love it. I absolutely love it. Um do they have access to my email? Uh give it to them if you want to, sir.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:44

It's ed E D K A T Z. Ed Katz at the word office O F F I C E the word moves plural M-O-V-E-S.com, and I'll be more than happy to send it to you. It's uh really been quite successful.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:12

Well, guys, as you know, as you can tell, within the short amount of time that we've sat with Mr. Ed, he is a wealth of knowledge. I encourage you, reach out to him. He took my phone call out of being out of the blue, surprised him. Hey, hey, this is who I am, these are the problems I'm dealing with. Can you help me? Um, with that said, if you want to get a hold of him, his email is a great way to do that. He shot me a call the next day. If you're in the moving world, hi, please reach out to Mr. Ed. He's going to help you in some way, somehow. He is the uh the godfather of the moving world, and we just heard why. And and and just the unbelievable just grind that you went through to get to where you're at today, sir. So commendable and so respectable. And I and I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing it with us. But I do have one more question for you, and I think you'll have a great answer here, sir. I ask everybody that comes on the show, um, you know, maybe take yourself back to when you were working as a lumper, but you know, those guys that are just sitting there thinking, man, I'm never gonna get through this job. I'm never gonna get anywhere. What am I doing? Um, my wife's mad at me, or maybe I don't have a wife yet, and they're just absolutely down in the dumps, and they're just not thinking life's gonna take them anywhere. Um, but they're just truly tired of being stuck in the same cycle, stuck in the mud per se, mentally, physically, emotionally. What would you say to them today, sir?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:53

Don't give up. I always like to say the three Ps that I didn't, it just evolved over the years. The three P's patience, persistence, perseverance. What I didn't stir in was my lovely wife from New York. When I moved the family to Atlanta three months later, she said, either you come back to New York or I'm divorcing you. She took the kids back to New York. My real estate company over that 12-month period failed. I had a college degree that was worthless, right? Ended up being a mover helper. I never gave up. I kept saying to myself, I'm just not gonna, I'm just not gonna let it get to me. I just have to believe I'm here on this planet. And look, every day when I wake up and the earth is below me instead of above me, I'm grateful. I really am. And before my final bell tools, and looking back over my

Free Book Offer And How To Reach Ed

SPEAKER_02 1:12:55

life, if I can say I improve the quality of service in local office movie even by 2%, I will think I've died and gone to heaven. That's all don't give up. Everybody has shit going on in their lives. Um I'll add it to swear. Yeah, everybody has shit going on in their lives. And you have a choice: you can be a victim or you can be a survivor. I have no idea what's in store for me now. I mean, just getting out of bed in the morning, it really is an act of Congress. I go, I go to this high-end gym with all these old people, my age and older, younger, but mostly old people, and all they talk about I got a sore shoulder, my hip surgery, I got cancer and all that. As soon as they start whining to me, I go like this 1-800 nursing home because get over it. Where does it say we're not supposed to have stress? Well, where was it written uh guaranteed that we're not supposed to have pressure, stress, problems? Come on, enjoy yourself. Every day is a gift. We could get nuked tomorrow, we could be vaporized. You're gonna worry about well, am I gonna make much money on this job? You better look at the big picture and thank God for every day that we have because you never know.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:18

Don't give up. The man said it, the man said it himself. Uh Mr. Ed, thank you for the wealth of wisdom today. I'm sitting here processing some of the things that you said, and I want to I could dive off in for a whole nother episode. And honestly, I think this is gonna be a wonderful episode. Um, and I think the audience is really gonna relate to it in so many different ways. And maybe we have you back on for a diver deep of uh where you're at in the world and how you can help and maybe get some questions. I'd love to hear if you are a moving company out there and you've been listening

Don’t Give Up And The Three Ps

SPEAKER_00 1:14:55

to the show for a while, please reach out to me if you can't get a hold of or or need Mr. Ed's email. I'd love to put you in connection in some way somehow.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:04

You want my phone number? Well, that's totally up to you, sir. I got thousands of movers in Atlanta to have my cell phone number. Might as well give it to you guys, too. There you go. It's 404-358-2172, 404-358-2172, and it's probably worth what it's gonna cost you nothing. So, I mean, I'm just telling you, you'd be surprised. Warren Buffett was put on the board of directors for Coca-Cola, and they said, Why in the world would you put Warren Buffett on the board of directors for Coca Coca-Cola? He's not from the beverage industry, he doesn't know anything about it. That's an advantage. He doesn't know you can't do it the way he wants you to think about doing it. It's good to have somebody also, not just from your industry, but also from outside your industry, someone like me, maybe, if you're in construction, to bounce ideas often because you already know what you can't do, right? Everybody's I tried that in another city, or I tried that on a different project, it won't work and all that. You have someone like me that doesn't know anything about construction, may have an idea that's a fresh idea that you never thought of. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:23

Yep, no, wonderful words, sir. And uh guys, truly have enjoyed this episode. Hope you have to hit some key points home. Don't give up. That's such a good one. That truly is. I'm in the middle of don't give up to. And truly, if you guys are looking for somebody, mentor, go find one. Don't don't just sit there and and chew on it. Go find somebody that's done it that can help you past it. Guys, if you wouldn't mind sharing this out, sharing an episode out, telling telling somebody about

Final Takeaways And Share Request

SPEAKER_00 1:17:00

the show. I really appreciate it. We have gathered up quite the following this year. There's some crazy things in the works, and I'm really excited to be sharing with those with you guys as they come down the pipe. But until then, we're gonna keep coming at you at 5 a.m. on Wednesdays every single week, and truly looking forward to helping and being an impact out there with you guys this year. So until then, you guys be safe, and we'll talk at you then. Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast, where we discuss the realest, rawest, most relevant stories, and strategies behind building every corner of a blue collar business. I'm your host, Sai Kirby, and I want to help you what it took me, trial and error, and a whole lot of money to learn the information that no one in this industry is willing to share. Whether you're under that shake tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox.