PROFESSIONAL TRAINING COURSE #1
THE COURSE EXPLAINED
THE COURSE EXPLAINED
TRAINING SESSION #1
1-a) WHY DO THIS TRAINING COURSE?
ONE GOOD REASON IS TO BE PAID WELL FOR DOING IT.
One good reason to do this training course is because you will be paid $10 for doing each 10 minute training session working on this course, when done in combination with you doing a two-hour-minimum job. On two hour minimum jobs, when you want to add more work and more pay to your day, you can do so by adding a training session. You can pick which two-hour-minimum jobs you want to add a training session to, allowing you to choose when you want to do this, when you feel like it, when you have free time, when you don't feel rushed, and when you're still fresh.
This is commonly only going to be after "Two-Hour-Minimum" jobs, and you're wishing you had some more paid work. Here's that more paid work when you want it. When you have something else you need to rush off to do, that's ok too, skip the extra work. A training session could even be done on a lunch break or before the start of a job, if you and the crew get there early enough.
Each "training session" is set at a length of at least ten minutes to qualify for the extra $10, although if you're wanting to, it's sometimes worth it to spend up to fifteen minutes. There is only one paid training session allowed to be added to each two-hour-minimum job. To qualify, the crew must call AGMC and join in a group conference call for AGMC to direct the lesson for that Training Session. If AGMC doesn't answer or call back within five minutes, the Lead can direct the training session, although still needing to cover material from the website training course.
1-B) The normal pay rate for a two-hour-minimum job is $60. When you choose to add a ten minute training session, via a conference call to AGMC, you get a bonus of $10, having you make $70 instead of $60. For those ten minutes of training, that extra $10 means you would be making $60/hr for those ten minutes. That extra training session is your choice to do or not.
1-C) These short training meetings will add up over time, allowing coverage of the whole course. As you cover each subject, AGMC checks you off on AGMC's master list, so there's a record of what you have and haven't covered.
Not only does every single Pro football team in the world do training, but also every electrician, dentist and hair stylist.
Did you know that to become a hair stylist in Oregon it's mandatory that a student log 1,110 hours of supervised training BEFORE they can do their first haircut as an unsupervised professional, and that these students PAY FOR THEIR TRAINING, NOT GET PAID.
Do you think there's less that a mover should know about moving than a hair stylist should know about cutting hair, before plying their trade?
1-D) Getting the extra $10 pay for a training session is a privilege not a right. It's an offer made by AGMC that can be withdrawn by AGMC if AGMC judges that a mover is not making good use of the training sessions.
1-E) Each paid training session is supposed to address any one or more of three areas of study. Area number one is a "game-play review" where we talk about what went most wrong on a job and how to best help those problems. Area number two is a covering of course material. And area number three is practicing, working on, and verifying that you can do certain physical techniques.
1-F) This third area, of showing you can do certain physical demonstrations, is sometimes going to be done by AGMC having a cameraman (or woman) come to your job site to video certain aspects of the work going on.
Some of the video will be by a video-call to Phil so Phil can watch in real-time. Other video might be recorded for later review. AGMC will always check with the customer first to make sure they don't mind before doing so. And with an independent cameraman (paid by AGMC), the customer and crew can't object that it's taking any time away from the movers doing their job.
But just like any professional sports football team, if you have any objection to being video taped and watched, you're in the wrong line of work, and you shouldn't be a football player, and shouldn't sign up for getting moving jobs through AGMC, because reviewing these "game-plays" is what these professions do to ensure and improve the performance of their teams.
Once you cover the whole course, you become AGMC certified, and you'll receive an AGMC certification certificate, which makes you worth much more per hour for your work, gets you more and bigger jobs, far better qualifies you for a Lead position, and helps both you and your fellow movers become far better movers.
The other even bigger reason to do the course is to become a much better mover so you can make much more money. Keep in mind that the top movers in this industry make $80,000 to $100,000 a year with a couple month long vacations. You can take this as a side job, or you can make this a profession, in which case you need to become an expert.
With that in mind, those movers who are serious about this aren't going to wait for an occasional two-hour-minimum job to learn a little bit in only ten minutes of a training session, they're going to want a much quicker learning curve than that. There's no reason you can't study this course as fast as you want to.
Remember, once you learn this stuff, this is a professional expertise that will not only help you make money via "A Great Moving Crew", it will make you worth gold to any other moving job opportunity you might be interested in at any time down the road. It's like a money producing machine that will always be in your pocket.
1-G) To be able to do this course, you need to get a phone-screen link to the AGMC website set up on your phone.
You will need to use your phone to access the material on the website on most all group training sessions, so a quick and easy way to get to the website on your phone is a critical requirement for doing this course. If you don't already have this Phone link icon on your home screen, you should get it RIGHT NOW by following the following directions.
On your phone, Google search and find the actual AGMC website. Look for "A Great Moving Crew" at "agreatmovingcrew.com".
Then look for the three little dots lined up in a vertical row in the upper right corner of your phone screen, tap it, and choose the "Add to home screen" option. Then position your AGMC icon where you want it on your phone home screen.
1-h) An additional thing this AGMC phone link can be used for is as an "encyclopedia" or quick reference "cheat-sheet" of answers for movers.
You can also study and learn when you have down-time, relaxing in your recliner, riding as a passenger in a car, or laying in bed, if you want to.
The other thing that would be helpful for you to set up (in order to do this course) is a video call app.
If you have a Galaxy phone with Verizon, which is what AGMC has, it's already an automatic feature you can choose. If not, you need to communicate with AGMC and explore app options that will work. Then test it out to make sure it works.
1-j) One way to look at these paid training sessions is to compare it to what a professional sports football team does.
Is there any professional sports team in the world that could be a good professional sports team if their players and coaches never did any training, never learned any "plays", and never reviewed their game re-play videos to try to perfect their performance and work on weak spots?. Group training sessions are not for the amateur YMCA weekend players, they are for the pros, ALL of the PROS. There's a reason for that. The only way a team can raise the performance level to a top competitive level is to seek out the teams weak spots in team game-play reviews, and then to work on those weak spots. Everyone knows this, and so this is why IT IS THE JOB of these professionals to actually SEEK OUT and openly analyze any weak spots in these team game-review meetings. This is what they signed on for. And you should only be signing on with AGMC if this is what you are signing on for.
1-K) DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS OF YOUR FELLOW MOVERS
A huge additional reason to do the training meetings is that a system that requires YOU to work on your weak spots also requires YOUR FELLOW MOVERS to work on their weak spots. When your fellow movers "piss you off" and do stupid, annoying and unskilled things, THIS system of "team-game-review" and working on our weak spots has the more important side effect of quickly identifying and working on your fellow crewmen's biggest weak spots.
A better crew alongside you makes YOUR life much easier, happier, more enjoyable and more profitable. So even if you don't think you need any training or improving of your weak areas, you can hardly say it wouldn't be better for YOU if your fellow crewmen worked on and improved their weak areas.
But in order for your fellow crewmen to be able to work on their problems, you have to honor the training system that trains everyone together, with you helping them to identify and work on their weak areas. Your help is part of what it takes to actually identify and work on the problems you wish weren't there in your fellow movers. if you're not on board with the easy way to work on your fellow crewman's' problems, you'd have no right to be disgruntled about anything your fellow crewmen are doing wrong, because it would actually be YOUR fault for interfering with their chance to work on their problems. This is where we need to come together to help each other.
There is no more common cause of a loss of work, or getting less work, than a mover having a "blind spot" problem that other movers shake their heads about, and have as the reason they don't want to work with that "blind spot" mover. All it would take is for the person with a blind spot to BE TOLD about the blind spot problem, and work on that problem, in order for other movers to change their mind and say "Hey, we want to work that THAT guy now", and greatly increase the work flow to that mover. But what usually happens is that movers with their own blind spots DON'T GET THE FEEDBACK and so just continue to be mystified as why people get the jobs they do or don't get, or rather just assume they're not getting jobs due to some other unrelated reason. Use the team training meetings to get feedback, work on your blind spots, and become ten times more WANTED to be worked with. That's what will crank up the money flow into your pockets. Otherwise, you won't even know what you've run into.
1L) Clearly, the fastest way to identify and work on the currently most important problems that need fixing, is to identify what went most wrong on the job, talk about it right after the job when it's most fresh on everyone's minds, and work on improving those specific things, more urgently than learning the bulk of other mover techniques that aren't causing an immediate problem. If you have a flat tire, work on fixing that first.
But the things that went most wrong on the job are the things that most movers are afraid will cost them a loss of work if what they did becomes revealed.
Some are less afraid because they recognize that the real expert movers already know that it is those movers who dive into working on their weak spots that are the movers who are going to become great movers, and so they know the open tackling of problem or weak areas is a plus not a minus.
But most movers equate what they did wrong (what could have been done better), as something they think could harm them or make their job less stable if it becomes known and talked about.
What would happen if we do a "game-play review" training meeting and you speak up about what you think could have gone better on the job, and you said...
"Hey, Jack was drinking a beer on the job and the customer got pissed"; "Rick stepped on and broke the customer's big mirror because it was laying on the floor under a blanket, and we didn't know there was anything under the blanket"; "Bob was using a hand-truck wrong", "Sam was on his phone all day and the customer was noticing". "Hey, I felt belittled by the way I was being talked to," , "I think Sam didn't secure that piano right". ???
Yes, Sam might say, "Hey, you XXX XXXX snitch! I was hoping nobody would notice the piano fell off the tuck"
There is always risk when talking about other peoples weak spots, that's true.
1-M) HOWEVER
Just suppose you were a professional football player, doing team game-play video reviews to look for how the team could have done better.
In your opinion, should an assistant coach reveal to the coach and the rest of the team in a team game-video review meeting that a particular player, in a particular situation, keeps stepping to the left when he should be stepping to the right? Is that snitching or doing the job the whole team signed on for?
Is that assistant coach doing his job to point that out and try to constructively help improve the player & his team, or is he "snitching"?
1-N) Right or wrong, helpful or not helpful, some fellow movers are just going to hold it against you if you say anything about anything they could do to do a better job. They also might appreciate the help of you identifying and helping them work on their weak spot. It might go either way. It's your call to test the waters on what you want to try to say in a group conference call training session.
But what you can do that's not risky to bring up in a group training course session is to simply pick the section of this training course that covers the subject that someone else is messing up on, and ask to cover that subject, either by asking AGMC in a private phone call to cover that subject in the next group training session, or to just ask at the beginning of a training session; "hey, can we cover the course section on customer donated items?". We're going to pick a subject anyway, so if that picked subject just happens to be relevant to a current need, great, that's not "snitching", and no one can complain. AGMC and the course content will be the one addressing how to do better in a subject matter, not you.
It is true that others usually can see your weak spots and blind spots far easier than you can, so there is a huge advantage to getting feedback about your weak and blind spots from others. But you're often not going to be hearing about that from others because they might be concerned about dealing with all the negatives of talking about your weak spots to or in front of you.
So if your big priority is getting better at this profession so you can make more money, over your priority of not looking "bad", then you need to not only ask your most expert fellow movers for the feedback about your weak spots, you need to respond to the feedback in a way that makes them WANT to give you more feedback in the future. If you don't, that feedback will be closed off to you no matter what you ask for.
1-P) It might be helpful to keep in mind that it's only "Snitching" if the understanding you have with your fellow movers is to NOT reveal and talk about the problems that happen on jobs.
1-U) The only difference between snitching and helping is whether you are ASKING for help to talk about and work on you weak spots, or whether you are ASKING (maybe unstated) to keep your weak spots a secret.
In the hair stylist industry, for those whole first 1110 hours of training, the stylists ASK the instructor to examine every single job they do for what could have been done better, and they are shown "look, here's the part you missed". Have you ever had one of those hair-cut-school haircuts?
You can't make the other guys ask for feedback and mean it. But you can ask for feedback and mean it yourself.
So if that's what you want, ask for it in the training sessions, and do it clearly and regularly, or you'll stop getting that feedback.
Remember, feedback is the quickest way to improve the most important thing you should be improving, making it the most valuable thing you could be getting.
Also, AGMC knows how much it improves a team's work performance to be fixing the team's weak spots, so when moving helpers try to help the team identify and work on problems, AGMC give both that mover and the mover's team a RANKING BOOST, which will give them all even more overall work than they would otherwise get.
1R) As far as AGMC is concerned, Phil knows that it's the movers who talk about and deal with weak spots that are the most valuable movers, so know that talking about "weak spots" is not a negative as far as Phil is concerned. Keep in mind that Phil's only interest is in trying to help during these team training meetings is to SEE IF HE CAN BE OF HELP. That's it. If a crewman says "Scott is always on his phone, and it makes us look bad". Phil would say
"Hey, a neat trick I used to use is to go to the customer early in the job and tell them that I'm keeping track of my phone use time and that the customer will not be charged for that time. If done early in the job, before the customer spends a lot of time being disgruntled about it, it actually makes us look even better, more honest and more professional. It actually earns us points, as long as the phone use time is actually deducted off the customer's bill at the end of the job. See if that helps. And maybe try to shorten your personal calls, or tell your people not to call during jobs unless it's an emergency. What do you think?".
Phil will usually surprise you with actually useful ideas from his long experience. Or maybe not in some cases, but at least we're trying to fix problems. The result of bringing a problem to Phil's attention is that Phil will only try to help. That's it.
Again, Phil guarantees no negative repercussions will follow AS LONG AS THE PROBLEM IS TALKED ABOUT AND WORKED ON. The only reason were talking about it is for us to work as a team to try to help each other.
1S) Also keep in mind that Phil already knows there are always problems happening on jobs, or things that could be improved. Phil's done this work for twenty years, and knows a lot more about what goes on on these jobs than you might think. Not talking about things that could be improved is just telling Phil that the crew is not willing to talk about or improve their problems, it's not actually hiding the problems, it's only hiding the specifics.
So you need to decide what kind of team do you want to sign on for, a PROFESSIONAL SPORTS TEAM GOING ALL OUT FOR THE SUPER BOWL where the team openly talks about and works on weak spots, or a YMCA girls' ball club where not even constructive-criticism is allowed?
Excuse me, I stand corrected. Even the Eugene YMCA's little girls ball club (shown above) has a coach and has team-talks about their weakest areas to try to improve.
The only weak spots that will not be allowed to be talked about are Phil's weak spots, because Phil obviously has no weak areas that could be improved. Just look at that mug. A picture of perfection. But everyone else I've ever known, always has areas that could be improved.
But how about you. Is your ego going to melt like the wicked witch of OZ doused with water if anyone mentions what you could do to improve?
Or are you going to use feedback like gold, ask for it, want it, and make money from that? How fragile is your ego?
TRAINING SESSION #2
THINKING YOU CAN WING-IT
2-A) Another big reason that holds back movers from making rapid advancements in becoming a Super Mover is that they think they can "wing it" and take their time to learn things. They think, "aww, I'm only moving furniture, it's not rocket science." It's not that critical that I learn stuff quickly.
But what happens is that those evaluating your service cringe at what you don't know, and assess you as a bad risk for not knowing things that is risking a big financial loss. AGMC is "cringing" with worry, when you are thinking "hey, I'm doing pretty good". This is to say that you don't know some critically important things that you don't know about. And when you think you know "enough" for now, this lets you delay in learning, which is actually costing you big money, and you have no idea about this.
2-C) There is an aspect of this profession that is similar to the profession of being an electrician or dentist, and that aspect is training and certification. You wouldn't try to drill on someone's teeth without dental training, or install the electrical wiring in a solar battery system (shown here) without getting electrical training. And you wouldn't want a "serviceman" to work on YOUR teeth without dental training.
The main difference in this moving business is that a lot of people who are trying to be movers think they can just figure out how to be a mover as they go along, by just doing moving work. But that's only because they don't know that they don't know some very important things.
2-D) Take for example a mover who hooked up the water hoses on a washing machine, did a fine job and left the job after the customer was happy with the completed job. The mover didn't know the mover-rule that he was supposed to get a water damage liability disclaimer before working on water lines, or that the disclaimer also instructs the customer to watch for water leakage during the first drain cycle.
This mover forgot to put the drain hose in the drain slot, and wasn't trained to know the mover-rule of having to zip-tie the drain hose onto the drain slot. The customer turned on the washer, left the house to go to dinner, and the house flooded with no one home, resulting in a $9,998 damage claim.
This is a section of the floor that needed to be replaced, along with most of the HVAC system the water ran down into.
2E) And it doesn't take forgetting to put the drain hose in the drain slot to cause $10,000 of water damage. Sometimes a little something gets stuck in the hose, or a crack develops, or the pump jolts and works the drain hose out of the drain slot over time. If this mover had taken the training, he may have still forgotten to put the drain in the drain slot, but the warning in the disclaimer for the customer to need to WATCH the first drain cycle would have allowed the customer to shut off their machine at the first sign of water leakage, and prevented any serious problem from happening in the first place.
All this difference from only 60 seconds worth of learning (or not learning).
AGMC knows this, and knows that a mover who is not certified to know this is a risk of $10,000 dollars of AGMC's money on every job that mover does while not certified, all while the mover thinks "I'm a great mover", knowing nothing about this.
2F) Another mover didn't know the mover-rule that he needed to take pictures of how he had placed things into a storage unit. Three months later the customer had a different moving company move her stuff to across the country to Texas. The other movers took pictures of several broken items claiming that they had found them broken in the storage unit. One of their pictures is shown next.
Their pictures showed things that to me look like those movers had already moved (and broken) things themselves before taking pictures. But this $14,000 lawsuit could have been avoided if the original mover (or Lead) had just taken pictures of his unload into the storage unit.
2G) One mover (who I won't let anyone know is Grant) knew the mover-rule about needing to take a picture of pre-existing damage before moving an item, but forgot the mover-rule that the picture (or pictures) need to show not only the damage, but also the surrounding original room to prove that the picture was taken BEFORE we moved the item. That exact pre-existing damage picture is shown next.
The customer was later shown the pre-existing damage picture, but of course the customer said the picture was taken after we moved and broke the item, making the pre-existing damage picture worthless. All needless. This should also remind you that the process of learning something is not done when you've learned it. Learning something needs reminding and practicing, which is another reason for the training meetings.
2-H) Another mover wasn't trained to know he was using the wrong kind of floor dolly wheels on a wooden floor, and this lack of knowledge of wheel-types left wheel indentations on the wooden floor, which cost a $4,000 damage claim. All from not knowing the difference between wheel types. You wouldn't know there was something critical you should know, until after you were trained to know it.
2-I) There's a hundred other examples we could give similar to these four, of all different varying damage situations and costs, but we're not going to go over all the mover-rules right here. The point of these examples is to convey that if you weren't TOLD or shown these mover-rules, you could work for years and not know about them until it cost you and/or your moving company, and AGMC, many THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS.
If you are not certified as having proven to AGMC that you know the needed list of mover-rules, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW, and your moving company or referral service (AGMC) doesn't know what you know or not, and so does know you are likely to be a very costly accident waiting to happen. That means the parties that are choosing the crews ARE VERY MUCH LOOKING FOR MOVERS WHO HAVE SHOWN THAT THEY KNOW THESE THINGS THAT YOU NEED TO KNOW, the things that are in this course, because it is literally gambling the loss of MANY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to not be sure you know these things.
2-J) And then there's the separate aspect of the mover-rules that just help you actually do a better, easier, safer job, and not just avoid huge damage claims. You might know how to get the customer's furniture moved, but what you don't know are the things you DON'T KNOW that could otherwise get the job done quicker, safer, more easily, more enjoyably, more impressively, less stressfully and more profitably.
Which makes more of a difference to the people choosing your services, you avoiding many thousands of dollars of loss via damage claims, or just you learning how to do a way better job that would make all the customers give you five star reviews?
Let's do the math. When a mover learns how to do all the hundreds of little tricks that gives them control over getting all five star reviews, all the time, avoiding even the rare less-star review, that makes all the parties that are choosing moving services go straight to that mover and choose that mover first over all the other possible movers, which means you gain full control of picking as much work as you want, and being able to cherry pick which jobs you want, which, in this business, translates to you having full control of what could be a $100,000 a year income for you. The mover that doesn't learn and do these little tricks can work just as hard but be getting hardly any work, and struggle to pay rent. There's that much difference in learning and doing the material in this course.
It's also important to not loose sight of the fact that you might already know every single thing this course talks about, but if you haven't proven to AGMC that you know and do these things, AGMC doesn't know you know these things, and so AGMC referrs jobs to you as though you don't know these things. In order for you to get jobs referred to you as though you do know these things, you have to pass the tests, cover the course material with AGMC, and get AGMC certified on all these things.
2-K) So there's the "you actually being a better mover" half of it, and the "you being certified" half of it. The first half without the second half doesn't get you far.
On just the "learning" side of it, you don't know what it is that you don't know. So you can't judge how much of a difference a little technique talked about in this course might make until you put it to the actual test and see. Don't judge a piece of advice or technique until you put it to the test and see for yourself. Once you learn what these mover-rules are and how much they can help you, only then should you decide the value of these mover-rules and techniques. Until you learn these things, you are like a painter who thinks his little half inch artist paint brush is doing a great job painting a house, no one could do better, while the professional painter next door finished painting his customer's house in a fraction of the time by using a professional spray paint gun.
2-L) It's normal and natural to believe you are doing just fine without any of this "teaching", everyone believes that. So if you're right and you already know most of the critical information presented in this course, this course should be a breeze to just confirm to your moving company what you know, by getting certified, which makes you a lot more money, even if you don't need to actually learn anything. The more useful things you find that you didn't know, the more you win also. So either way you win and getting certified makes you a lot more money.
2M) Part of being a professional is being aware what all tools are available, having the best tools, and having the best knowledge of how to use those tools. If you don't have the right tools for the job and don't know how to do the job the most efficiently, you are wasting the customer's time and money, making the job needlessly more dangerous, more risky as far as causing damage, and more risky about causing injuries, and that makes you a "second rate" mover.
Imagine a mechanic who doesn't have the right tools, takes twice as long as it would take with the right tools, and then charges you by the hour. You would not be a happy customer. If you don't want to be that bad mechanic, or someone using a hand-crank drill to drill on people's teeth (with no dental training), then find out what tools are available, what tools YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT, and you get certified on how to use them.
2-M) This course does teach some of the very best ways to do things. But even for all the stuff that could be done ten different ways, it is very helpful for a whole team to learn the same dance routine, done the same way, so that the team can coordinate and flow with each other in a much more efficient and less frustrating way.
But in order to learn the same dance routine, there has to be a single dance routine the team knows they're doing. This course is that dance routine.
2-N) It's automatic for people to want to cherry pick which "dance steps" they want and don't want, and that's natural. However, many of the dance steps presented in this course have their benefits amplified or occur only when doing some of the other dance steps presented in this course.
So if you "Cherry Pick" some steps and not others, you won't ever learn what benefits you COULD HAVE LEARNED ABOUT if you had tried the recipe as a whole.
2-O) Your cherry picking also sends a confusing message to the other crewmen you work with, telling them you never know which course teachings they're supposed to pay attention to or not, that there is no one specific dance routine we're supposed to be learning (or at least trying), which makes this dance so much harder to learn that it really messes up the whole thing.
2-P) So it's important for you to first learn and do ALL of the dance steps presented in this course, together as a complete dance, and only then, after you've seen what gifts this can deliver, only then decide the value of this course. Otherwise, you are basing your judgment on only speculation and often misunderstanding instead of the knowledge of experiencing this dance routine correctly. In other words, give it a try as a whole, first.
2-Q) This course is divided into twelve sub-courses (or chapters), with each covering a specialized area of moving expertise.
1) Course Explained.
2) Basics
3) Pad Wrapping
4) Common Items
5) Equipment
6) Truck Loading
7) Specialty Techniques
8) Specialty items
9) Pro Packing
10) Don't do
11) Repairs
12) Running your own company
2-R) It's better to concentrate on taking the earlier sub-courses earlier because latter lessons often rely on you having already read earlier explanations. Don't be fooled into thinking the more "basic" stuff is any less valuable than the what sounds like the more "advanced" stuff, because it is very common for "advanced" movers to be missing a few key aspects of "basic" stuff that is having a more negative impact on their income than not knowing some more "advanced" things. And if you get wrong some of the basics (or earlier sub-courses) it greatly undermines the value you would bring as a more advanced mover.
Besides, if you are a more advanced mover and you do know most of this stuff, it should be a walk in the park for you to knock out the stuff you already know.
2-S) It's not only free to take these courses, remember you are being PAID WELL to do it during your two-hour-minimum jobs. And when you feel like it you can jump ahead of everyone else and read ahead at your own pace, when ever jobs slow down for you, or when you can sneak in a few minutes. But you can also just wait for the paid training times. But what ever you do, actually give this a try, take it seriously, and don't be so sure you have noting to learn.
2-T) For most of the things this course tells you to do, you would not actually do them if you didn't believe it was very much in your interests to do them. So this course explains why these things are in your interests to do them.
For example, if you didn't know that police existed or about $800 phone tickets, you might think other people were overreacting if they told you "you shouldn't be on your phone while driving if there's a police car pulled up next to you". But if you found out the WHY the hard way, and it cost you a $800 ticket and an increased insurance rate for years to come, then you would drop your phone in that situation regardless of any "mover rule" someone else tells you about.
2-U) It's an unfortunate fact that movers being given just a list of "mover-rules" usually results in movers just feeling inconvenienced and bothered about having to humor someone else about any "mover rules". To actually DO these things, movers need to learn either the hard way, by failing and suffering because of something gone wrong that hurts them, or by learning from just the idea of what could go wrong and hurt (or what could go right and really help). It's definitely better to NOT have to actually lose a finger in order to learn the lesson. Just hear about how the other guy lost his finger instead of losing one yourself. So this course tries to explain the WHYS, and not just give you a list of WHATS that you wouldn't believe in. But the WHATS are all because at some point there has been a good WHY that has caused a real issue in the past. That's my finger in this picture (on the left) from a mistake I made on a hot tub job. There's not a single thing in here that hasn't been important at some point to someone. That's why this course is so long, to explain all the WHYS, because you won't actually do a lot of the mover-rules without the WHYs.
2V) For the most part, movers just aren't going to take much (or any) time to work on course material on their "free time", which is hard to come by for everyone. So the primary bulk of time to work on this course must come DURING PAID time, because it's much harder to object to and be resistant to working on course material if you are getting PAID to do it. So PAID TRAINING TIME is the prime method of training that will actually work.
2-W) Right at the end of a moving job is the time where problems that occured on the job are most fresh on everyone's minds, and so is the best time to do a very brief (two or three minute) "game review" team meeting to talk about our weak spots on that job. However, on larger jobs, everyone's "spent" by that time, and so it's not a good time to actually "train", other than possibly for a couple minute "game review" talk at most.
2-X) This is why it's best to advance actual "training" at the end of very short jobs, like two-hour-minis, when everyone's at their maximum freshness, and already gathered together. This PAID TRAINING time would be at the end of Two-Hour-Minimum jobs, between the time that the customer's needs end, and the two hours that you are being paid for, along with the extra BONUS MONEY for the training. Remember, if a moving helper gets paid $60 for two hours that would be only $30/hr. If that two-hour-minimum job lasts only an hour, that's $60/hr. But for that extra $10 for ten minutes that's $60/hr.
2-Y) The material there is to learn in this course is actually too much to remember perfectly after completing the course. So part of the plan of this course is to use it not only to get certified, but also as an ongoing tool for refreshing your memory and perfecting your craft even more. Why is it you think that all the top professional sports people have coaches and do ongoing training sessions regularly, even when those top professionals are the very best in the world. It's because that ongoing training is what keeps then at the top of their game. Continuing to use this course even after certification is your ongoing training that's necessary to keep YOU at the top of your game.
2-Z) If you ever get to the point where you think all your fellow movers are doing everything perfectly, and you don't wish any of them would do anything differently, then you can stop all this team-training stuff (because that will never happen). Until then, the few moments of group training once in a while is at least doing SOMETHING about it, so you should be only very supportive of the occasional few moments of training.
TRAINING SESSION #3
3-A) WOULD YOU MAKE THE FOLLOWING DEAL?
You have to sign over the title to your house and car, in order for someone else to be able to gamble your property on what you know is a bad bet, and risk all your property again every day in order for you to be able to work at your job.
Sign here: ____________________________
Date: _______________
Why is the training and certification such an important topic for movers? I have a proposal for you. In order for you to work and make your hourly wage, you have to sign over the title to your house and car, and let someone else gamble on losing your property, on a roulette table, or on a bet you know is a bad bet. You also have to allow your house and car to be risked to be lost not just once, but have the dice rolled again every day you go to work, in order to keep your job. If this were the condition/deal of you being able to work, how long would you continue to want this deal if you really thought the odds of you loosing your house and car were bad? When you work uncertified, YOU are gambling your moving companies' money on the bad bet that you won't make a little mistake that costs $10,000. When you are uncertified, you are untrained and so have no reason to know what not to do. If you wouldn't take that bet, why would you expect your moving company or AGMC to do so?
3-B) When you get certified, at least you make it a GOOD bet with acceptable odds, and so give your moving company motivation to flood you with work. And if you are at least working on getting certified, the moving company knows the bad bet is temporary and so worth taking for a limited time while you work on get certified. It's the person who's putting their money on the table risking it to be lost that gets to decide what bet they are willing to take. In the moving business, it's the moving company that's taking the bulk of that risk, so the moving company gets to decide how something needs to be done that's taking that risk of loss. If a moving helper can't recognize that it's the moving company's right to decide what loss risks are being taken, (how something is to be done that takes that risk) then that moving helper is gambling someone else's money without their permission, and that's not only not right, it is a form of theft from the moving company, and this makes that mover a "bad and risky deal". In other words, if you treat your moving company like crap, you are undermining your own work source and your own income. So respect that you are being hired to do things a certain way that this course teaches you, not to just do what ever you feel like doing.
3-C) If you are "into" some subject, field or hobby, you would enjoy learning all the little tricks and hacks that can give you that extra edge. It's interesting, and you WANT to hear about what you are "in to".
If you are going to be truly successful as a mover, you have to feel a certain satisfaction in having the customer gush over you with gratitude, do an impressive job all the way through, and have everything go great. If this is the case, you should feel that every helpful tip you learn on how to make your job easier and better is something you want to be shown to you. That means you should feel this training course is an appreciated gift, and you'd be looking forward to doing it. This whole course is helpful tips. If you see it as a burden, that tells you you're in the wrong line of work.
3-D) There is also a DEMONSTATION component required to pass many of the points of this course. Sometimes AGMC can witness directly your demonstration of a point during an actual job, but this is rare and so only tests for very few points. Or, you have the option to expedite the DEMONSTRATION verification process by you sending pictures or video clips of your demonstration of a point to AGMC (or YouTube) any time. When AGMC checks off on witnessing a correct demonstration of a point, AGMC will check of that needed demonstatioin on your certification check list.
3-E) You also have the option to ask AGMC to "audit" you during an actual job, which means you are requesting for AGMC (Phil) to come out to one of your actual jobs and watch you specifically during your work on that job, so AGMC can see you demonstrate vast amounts of techniques and points off the certification check list, all very quickly. This greatly expedites the certification process.
However, AGMC (Phil) is only going to do this expediting process for free if Phil judges that you are a "shining star" mover who is already demonstrating a superior mastery of most of the moving techniques taught in this course, in AGMC's opinion. Otherwise, an "audit" costs $50/hr, paid to AGMC by the mover requesting the audit. If AGMC judges the mover to be currently ignoring many of the key simple "dance steps", Phil is not going to do the Audit for free.
AGMC
CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION
COURSE #2
PAD WRAPPING
This document certifies that on this _____ day of _______, 2024, _____________________, has completed the AGMC course on pad wrapping, and passed all 50 tests that comprise this course. This means that this mover has demonstrated a mastery over pad wrapping furniture, including droop blanketing, blanketing with tape, and blanketing with mover bands.
3-F) When you pass all the points in a sub-Course, you get an AGMC Certificate Of Completion in that training sub-Course. When you complete all ten sub-courses, you are considered "AGMC Certified", and you get an "AGMC MOVER COURSE COMPLETION CERTIFICATE". But what you really get is a money-making and job-improving gold mine of expertise.
3-G) The training and certification process only needs to increase your knowledge by five percent in order to make a BIG difference in the total income you're earning. That means you only need to find a few new things helpful to make the whole thing worth while. Suppose the one thing you learn is the thing that saves you from a ten thousand dollar damage suit. Suppose the one thing you learn is what saves you from chopping off the end of your thumb.
Don't worry about any of the things this course is warning you about. It's probably not worth finding out about and avoiding. That's my thumb, caused by me not following my own mover rule in this situation.
Suppose the one thing you learn from this course is the thing that saves you from that one-in-ten or one in twenty bad review, even though you're getting mostly good reviews. Avoiding that rare bad review would also make this course worth it, because shopping customers are zeroing in on reading the few bad reviews, and the lack any bad reviews is what turbo-boosts the sales, not just having good ones. Suppose the one thing you learn is the thing that saves you from an injury that stops you from working for six months. Also, there are two other main reasons for this.
3-H) Only a few minor key differences can make the difference between a customer leaving a five star review, and leaving no review or a bad review. Customers only bother to spend their precious time to leave a five star review online IF they are VERY impressed and think the service you gave was ABOVE AND BEYOND expectations. When was the last time YOU got online to leave a five star review out of all the many thousands of businesses you have encountered over the last year? None? No, just like you, customers don't take their precious time FOR THEM TO GO ABOVE AND BEYONE TO LEAVE YOU A 5 STAR REVIEW IF YOU DON'T GO WAY ABOVE AND BEYOND AND SUPPRISE THEM WITH MORE THAN THEY ARE EXPECTING. This means you have to DO MORE THAN JUST MOVE THEM if you want to be hugely successful. The frequency of 5 star online reviews (without complaints) are THAT important because the frequency of those reviews are a main determiner of the page listing order in which your moving company's services are listed on Google, YELP. Are you on top of page 1, bottom of page 1, or on page 7? That page listing order is the main determiner of the frequency of customers calling in. If you just get customers moved like they are expecting, you will get only seldom (or way fewer) online 5 star reviews, and you lose the single biggest factor that would otherwise multiply the number of customer phone calls. The unexpected extras are what makes it easy to get the frequency of 5 star reviews, and make you the real money. And much of this training material is about the little extras above and beyond just moving furniture.
3-I) A second main reason that a minor difference in the way you do things can make a big difference in your income is because on each new day the shopping customers (and others who would be choosing between options of movers) are going to choose only the one single best choice they can, out of the many service provider options out there, and so even though there might be only a very minor difference between choosing you and someone else, it is only the one single best option (better by maybe a hair) that most often gets chosen by each of the shoppers, leaving all the other majority of service providers (that are in this competition) NOT chosen that day. The shoppers are shopping. And everyone is actually a shopper. This is why being only a little bit better than the competition can result in getting much more work, or you working when there's not enough work for others. This training course is a wealth of information about little extras you can use to make you just a little bit better choice than your competition, which can mean A HUGE DIFFERENCE IN YOUR INCOME.
3-J) So be happy when you wade through nine things in this material you already know in order to find the tenth gold nugget you can add to your tool pouch. But even the nine things you already know are helpful to read about again and be tested upon because this process helps remind you of those nine things and newly sink in their concepts in a way that can make them done even better by you. It's all helpful. COURSE #1: THE BASICS is the next step. I recommend you decide now the time you are going to set aside to start it. Then keep making a little more headway each week. Enjoy!
3-K) Due to the mixing of crews on occasion, and a bit of mixing of course material being covered, it will likely happen that some training sessions will cover course material that's new to some movers while being already talked about for other movers.
That's not only OK, it's a basic part of training to revisit and practice certain things more than once to better engrain certain ideas and have movers better remember them, or at least remind them of useful things to know. How many times do you think Pro football teams practice different plays?
3-L) QUESTION:
What is the most beneficial to you subject matter for a customer, crewman, or AGMC to tell you about?
ANSWER: Complaints and problems.
Because complaints and problems tell you exactly what you most need to address in some manner, even if it's only a perception that you could do something about.
If you don't recognize the great helpfulness of hearing about complaints and problems, you are flushing gold down the toilet (and you were thrown into the chasm abyss). REMEMBER, you hearing about complaints and problems is WHAT YOU NEED TO BEST SUCCEED.
Suppose the space shuttle construction team took it as an insult for someone to tell them about a weakness in the design of a particular seal. What was it that happened to that space shuttle that blew up?
3-M) If you view critical feedback as people giving you what you most need to be successful you will be thankful for people telling you what they think you're doing wrong. If you view the exact same words as "snitching" out your problems as a "complaint", the exact same feedback will not only be of little benefit to you, it will cause a rift between you and the person giving you what you most need. Don't kick golden feedback aside because you mistake it for an insult to you, or you will lose that critical source of feedback and loose your best avenue for improving the most important things you need to improve TO MAKE MONEY.
THIS IS THE END OF COURSE #1 (THE COURSE EXPLAINED)
You are worth much less to yourself and everyone else if you are not trained and certified, and so you will make much less money, lose much more potential work, and get far less and smaller jobs than you would otherwise get, and likely it will be just a matter of time before this doesn't work out for you for one reason or another, hopefully not because of a needless catastrophe that happens.