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Today’s All About Real Estate edition of Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio features Chris Harris, president, CEO and founder of Lift It Moving and Storage. Lift It is not your typical moving and storage business. The use of technology and automated processes has allowed the business to move beyond the standard expectations and services of a moving and storage company.
Chris and his brother started their business when they attended college at the University of Georgia in Athens. Back then, it was known as The College Moving Company. Motivated by a passion for entrepreneurship, Chris put his love for being able to “do his own thing” into action and decided to pursue the moving company full time after a stint working in the sales industry. Within 36 months, this little moving company was worth more than 1.2 million dollars. Lift It Moving and Storage is now doing business in more than 32 states and is continuing to expand. Much of the success of the company can be attributed to a rebranding, which came into play as the founders transitioned from moving college students and began working with other types of customers. Chris wanted a name that sounded modern and sleek reflected the company’s desire to revolutionize the moving industry, which he thought was lacking the implementation of technology.
The Lift It company motto is, “Moving in the Modern World.” Putting that motto into action involved figuring out how to implement the many ideas that the team had on how to change the way people move. Chris explains, “It was a big challenge, we had all these big ideas and had to figure out how to implement them. For instance, a lot of people in the business are still using paper forms, but why not use tablets?” Chris also notes that they have technology now that allows them to see recorded live footage from job sites allowing them to log in from anywhere around the country to see what is happening. Customers also have access to this technology as well. The use of technology has allowed Lift It to remove 33 action steps per customer interaction for its sales staff further allowing Lift It to set itself apart from its competitors.
One of the innovations Chris and his team have implemented is a unique pricing generator. Chris explains how they discovered the need for this type of service, “What we found in our industry was you couldn’t even get a ballpark price for moving even if it was just perspective. So we took averages on thousands of moves, associated weighted values to each and generated rough estimates.” In addition to moving services, Lift It also provides storage options as well. Currently the company has a strategic network of people that it refers storage customers to, but the long-term goal for the company is to have its own storage facilities making it a one-stop shop.
The company also works to give back through donations to charities. The commercial arm of the company regularly does furniture installations where they take out existing furniture and replace it with new product. The old furniture is typically given to charities that provide furniture to various women’s shelters and children’s organizations. Lift It has also recently started a program called Lift Higher, which will make contributions to help students fund their way through college.
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Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio’s “All About Real Estate” segment airs on Fridays and highlights the movers and shakers in the Atlanta real estate industry – the home builders, developers, Realtors and suppliers working to provide the American dream for Atlantans. For more information on how you can be featured as a guest, contact 770-383-3360 or via the contact form on this site.
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