How Local Muscle Movers 6X’ed Profits in Less than 3 Years

When Jake Holz, President at Local Muscle Movers, started hearing complaints from his crews about not feeling prepared for moves, he knew their existing process wasn’t working.

Headquartered in Portland, Main with a team of 13 movers and four trucks servicing the New England area, including interstate moves as far as New York and New Jersey, he and General Manager Michael Bensur had plenty of growth opportunities in front of them. 

To capture that demand effectively, it was time for a change. Starting with a unified system they could scale.

Struggling with rapid growth and system overload

Like many moving companies in the pandemic era, the team at Local Muscle Movers was experiencing a massive uptick in demand. The only problem?

They had virtually no visibility into how each branch was communicating with customers.

“Different branches had different ways of doing things. We couldn’t handle the demand or judge how jobs would go,” explains Michael. With a mission to ‘book more jobs with less', he knew he needed to streamline the company’s sales and operations, free up time for burnt out team members, and improve the experience for customers and crew.

“We knew the bolt-on approach wasn't going to work if we wanted to continue to grow," says Jake.

The team was using a patchwork system of Google calendars and Google forms to get leads. Eventually, they added Jobber into the mix. But no matter how many new tools they brought in, endless copy/pasting was still required to get customer information where it needed to go.

And often, that information simply wasn’t there when crews needed it.

From missing job info to missing updates, changes would often get made in one system but never carried over to the next. Crews were frustrated and so were customers.

Jake and Michael knew it was time to do better.

Switching to an all-in-one platform for a unified moving experience

Missed emails. Fragmented customer info. Endless workarounds.

With a growing number of communication misfires and dozens of tools for team members to log in and out of, the crew at Local Muscle Movers was getting fed up.

Jobber was built for field service businesses of all kinds. Improvements were broad and infrequent, and there was no vision in sight to become a one-stop shop for movers.

The patchwork system may have worked in the short-term, but it wouldn’t take them where they needed to go next.

To service the increase in demand without cutting corners on customer experience, Jake and Michael began looking for ways to streamline their tech stack. But with the jobs coming in faster than they could keep up with, they needed to choose the right time and the right tool.

“It's not fun to rip the band-aid off, but we knew we needed to," says Michael. "All these layers weren't working for scale. Now we have everyone—movers, customers, and employees—all in one place.

Once the off season hit, Michael saw his opportunity. He had done his research and chosen SmartMoving as the all-in-one system capable of bringing operations and sales together. 

“If you have trouble with your current system, SmartMoving is a one-stop shop — streamlined customer intake info, keeping communications in one place, adding photos to jobs, and more. We’ve now refined the entire process from A to Z. We used Jobber for 6 to 7 years before switching to SmartMoving. I can’t imagine going back to anything else,” says Jake.

Jake and Michael wanted a system that would save their team time by automatically populating customer intake information, simplifying inventory, and making asking for a review a seamless part of the process after a job is done.

"The actual vs. estimated amounts were so helpful for improving our estimates. This and the ability to see our speed to lead gave us vision and clarity about where to take the business. We were working on feelings and intuition before. Now we're working from data," explains Michael.

Michael knew changes were needed and in the long-term, the business would be in a much better place. And he was right.

Happy customers. Happy crew. Scalable system.

After making the switch to SmartMoving, the feedback from crew members started to shift. 

From “Why don’t I have this information?” to “Wow, jobs are going smoothly. We have all the info we need,” the team at Local Muscle Movers finally had a unified system they could scale.

What once took hours, was now happening in minutes. Operations and sales were working in harmony and the results of those efforts were starting to show.

"SmartMoving gives us a timeline of every piece of correspondence and so much more consistency. Before SmartMoving, we had 60-90 jobs completed. With SmartMoving, we have 179 jobs completed," says Michael.

After a modest $30K before SmartMoving to $60K their first year with SmartMoving and now reaching the $200K milestone in June 2023, the company’s profit was (and still is) growing quickly.

"We were finally able to put sales under the magnifying glass and really examine the type of jobs we were trying to book. Before SmartMoving, it was ‘first come, first serve,’ with no understanding of which jobs were profitable. Now we can be picky about booking our ideal jobs because we can see profitability and know how to aim for more profitable jobs," says Jake.

With the ability to track key data like demographics and pricing, he and the team finally had the insights they needed to make proactive vs. reactive decisions about how to grow the business.

And the result is pretty impressive. Jake and Michael have taken the business from $1.3M in revenue three years ago to just shy of $2.2M today.

Not only that, customers and crew are so much happier. 

With simple automated review requests and a seamless tip menu, the team has gone from 80 reviews to over 250 and $4-5K in tips every month.

And with deeper insight into their data, they now know not to book a simple two-hour move for midday on a Saturday. They can also show their team why that matters.

“SmartMoving gives us the visibility, process, and one place to execute, track, and pick better, more profitable jobs,” says Michael.

For Jake, Michael and the rest of the A-team at Local Muscle Movers, there are no signs of stopping.

They’re now diversifying their revenue streams by adding storage into regular moves and expanding the types of jobs they can offer.

6X growth without the headache

Changing up your team’s processes is never easy. But with SmartMoving, the team at Local Muscle Movers now has a one-stop shop that can be used the way they run their business. No more ad hoc systems. No more missing info.

From a patchwork system of different teams working in different silos to a streamlined experience from intake to follow-up and review requests, Jake and Michael have everything they need to take the business to the next level.

And that’s exactly what they’re doing.