7CEO 039: How A Moving Company Broke Through To 7 Figures With Wade Lombard

The 7-Figure CEO Podcast

[smart_track_player url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/7figureceo/7CEO_039__How_A_Moving_Company_Broke_Through_To_7_Figures_With_Wade_Lombard.mp3″ title=”7CEO 039: How A Moving Company Broke Through To 7 Figures With Wade Lombard” artist=”Casey Graham” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” ]

Today we have Wade Lombard, 35 year old entrepreneur from Birmingham, Alabama. In 2007, he transitioned from ministry to start a new business, Square Cow Moovers, in Austin, Texas, with his dad and brother-in-law. They began the company in the recession of 2008 without any knowledge of the moving industry. They built their business with guerilla marketing and making the promise to work hard and do what they said they would. They broke the 7-figure mark after 4 years and will be close to 8-figures this year. Wade’s role focuses on marketing, sales and brand.

They’ve grown to 45 trucks, 185 employees with 8 branches in Texas and Colorado. They still focus on providing the quality of service when they began.

LINKS

Check out Square Cow Moovers: SquareCowMovers.com

Email Casey: [e-mail]

Apply for personal coaching with Casey: CaseyGraham.com/Breakthrough

LEARNINGS Build A Solid Reputation

Despite the reputation of movers in the industry, they made the decision to always provide the best customer service and experience regardless of the bottom line. They have always been willing to give up a few percentage points of profit to take a “not satisfied” customer to “elated” customer.

Determine Your Target Audience

You must decide who your target audience – who you can serve best and make the most money for your margins. Wade and his partners decided they were going to go after the average family as their target client.

Get Creative With Your Marketing

One of the most successful marketing strategies Wade used was to take empty moving boxes with a simple letter attached to houses with a “For Sale” sign. They offered their services when the client was ready to move and established their brand within the community. They also partnered with a box company who provided all the boxes for a promotion in the marketing letter included.

Success Is A Science – Model What Others Do

If you see a business tactic or process that works in other businesses, figure out how to make it work in your business. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when there are so many successful businesses already.

Own Your Brand

You can make every single thing you do consistent with your brand. Examples from Wade: cowference, moovers, cow print, herd calls, etc. You must drive it internally and externally.

Hiring

You must accept that hiring quality people will always be one of the top three toughest areas in your business. Looking at the character of the person can often be more important than the skills they bring to the table. Most skills can be taught and are therefore secondary in the hiring process.

For their hourly work force, the interview process is about determining the type of person the candidate is more than what they know how to do.

Marry Your Metrics To What Really Matters

You need to determine the numbers that matter most to move the needle and measure them and keep them visible. To get and keep your team on board, you must make this simple and keep it in front of them. For Wade and his team, their top metrics are:

1. Customer survey results – they survey every customer and determine an average score for their branches.
2. Employee ratio – this is the number of employees to your revenue. Each branch must keep this in a healthy range for their business model.
3. Damage ratio – this is the amount of damages caused in the moving process.
4. Sales – each branch has a sales goal they must meet.

Laughable Financial Plan

Before beginning the company, they made the decision to not finance anything except for moving trucks. Three months into the business, they ran out of their investment capital. Because of their initial decision about debt, they didn’t pay themselves for a few weeks and pushed harder which got them the sales needed to get off the ground. They’ve stuck to their guns on this decision, which caused slim profits initially, but has paid off in the end.

Who’s Asking You The Hard Questions?

As the entrepreneur, you only know what you know. Having a paid coach will not only help you learn, but they’ll ask you the questions you won’t ask yourself. And the accountability that comes from paying someone to coach you will push you to the next level.

Can Your Business Run Without You?

I offer personalized coaching to help entrepreneurs create the business they dreamed of when they started. It’s 1.5 days to tackle your current challenges and help you break through to the next level. Apply today and our team will follow up for a consulting call if it’s a good fit.