Scaling Moving Companies the Right Way with Eric Wirks

Personal Discipline, Business Breakpoints, and Smarter Marketing for Movers

On The Snoball Effect Podcast, I get the chance to talk with operators who have actually done the work. People who have been on the trucks, in the office, under pressure, and on the other side of hard decisions.

Eric Wirks is one of those people.

Eric is the founder of Wirks Moving & Storage and the CEO of USA Home Listings. He has spent more than two decades in the moving industry, starting as an hourly employee and working his way through ownership, scale, and now building technology for the industry.

Eric does not sugarcoat the journey. He talks openly about mistakes, pressure, and the discipline required to build something that lasts.

Our conversation kept circling three big areas: how owners need to show up personally, how businesses actually scale, and how movers should think about marketing going forward.

Key Takeaways

• Personal discipline comes first: Fitness, routines, and resilience show up in leadership and decision-making.
• Growth has predictable breakpoints: Getting off the truck and hiring intentionally are non-negotiable.
• Clarity prevents chaos: Partnerships, roles, and decision rights must be defined early.
• Owners are often the bottleneck: Extreme ownership removes friction throughout the business.
• Fix sales: Sales must be healthy before marketing scales. 
• The moving industry is behind: That lag creates opportunity for owners willing to modernize now.

How Owners Need to Show Up Personally

Before Eric talked about growth strategies or tools, he talked about the owner.

Not the company. The person running it.

Measuring success with the 4 F’s

Eric measures success using what he calls the 4 F’s: Faith, Family, Finance, and Fitness.

Fitness plays an outsized role. When Eric is physically dialed in, everything else improves. His energy, focus, patience, and leadership all sharpen.

He trains intensely five to six days a week, but he is careful not to prescribe extremes for everyone. His advice for busy owners was simple and approachable:

“Just go walk for 45 minutes a day.”

Not because walking is revolutionary, but because it is sustainable. It builds consistency and reinforces the identity of someone who keeps commitments to themselves.

Doing hard things on purpose

Eric repeatedly returned to the idea of voluntary hardship.

He trains hard because business will eventually force discomfort on you anyway. Choosing difficulty daily builds resilience for when pressure hits.

When asked what actually led to his success as an entrepreneur, his answer was blunt:

“Being able to overcome extreme amounts of pain.”

That pain is not glamorous. It is long days, stress, uncertainty, and responsibility. The owners who make it are not the ones who avoid discomfort. They are the ones who learn how to function inside it.

Worth the squeeze?

One of the most important moments in the conversation came when Eric flipped the question back onto the listener.

Before chasing ownership, growth, or leadership, he believes owners need to ask one honest question:

“Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

Eric does not believe entrepreneurship should be oversold. Too many people are pulled in by highlight reels and underprepared for the grind. His point was not to discourage, but to clarify expectations. If you decide the juice is worth the squeeze, you must accept that it will be hard for a long time.

What Actually Makes a Business Scale

Eric’s business philosophy has been shaped by experience, including mistakes he is very open about.

The hidden cost of avoiding systems

When I asked Eric about the dumbest thing he had done as a business owner, he reframed it as ignorance.

For years, he ran a multimillion-dollar moving company with almost no technology. Everything was manual. Paper. Spreadsheets. Even accounting stayed basic far longer than it should have.

The company grew anyway, but Eric is clear about the cost. That lack of systems made growth harder and less efficient than it needed to be.

Once real tools and repeatable processes were implemented, the effect was immediate. The same effort suddenly produced better results, fewer mistakes, and less chaos.

Partnerships require brutal clarity

Part of that delay came from a partnership dynamic. Eric had a partner who was significantly older and resistant to change. The partnership worked in some ways, but their visions for the future were not aligned.

Eric is not anti-partnership. He is anti-vagueness.

Partnerships only work long-term when strengths complement weaknesses and both parties agree on direction. Anything less eventually creates friction.

That is why he emphasizes what he calls “keep honest people honest” documentation. Operating agreements, buy-sell clauses, and decision rights should be painfully clear.

Breakpoints that signal real growth

Eric uses the concept of breakpoints to describe moments when a business is ready to level up, but only if the structure changes.

• Getting off the truck. Staying too long traps owners in chaos.
• Choosing ops or sales. Once you stop doing everything, decide which lane you own and hire for the other.
• Avoiding premature titles. Most companies do not need a true GM before $5M or a full-time CFO until $10–15M.

The common failure point at these moments is not the market or money. It is the owner’s inability to let go.

Extreme ownership removes bottlenecks

Eric believes many businesses stall because the owner becomes the bottleneck.

He does not micromanage. He hires capable people and expects them to win. And when he makes a mistake, he owns it quickly and publicly.

If new hires fail, the first question should not be “What is wrong with them?” It should be “What system did I fail to build?”

Willful blindness erodes culture

Eric also warned about willful blindness. This happens when leaders see standards being ignored but choose not to address it because conflict feels uncomfortable.

Avoiding accountability is not kindness. It is neglect.

Marketing in 2026

Eric believes the moving industry is five to fifteen years behind other home service industries in its use of data, automation, and modern marketing.

That lag is not a threat. It is an opportunity.

One of Eric’s most repeated points was simple:

“Sales solves all problems.”

If sales is broken, marketing only amplifies the problem.

The movers who win long-term are not just the ones who rank well or run ads, but the ones who reach customers earlier, faster, and more consistently than everyone else.

Pulling It All Together

Personal discipline supports leadership. Leadership supports systems. Systems support scale. And marketing works best when everything underneath it is healthy.

Connect with Eric

If you want to engage with Eric directly, join Moving Company Owners Unite, the vetted Facebook group he co-founded where licensed, insured moving company owners share what actually works.

To learn more about his platform, visit USA Home Listings and ask about Vacancy AI, which helps movers avoid wasting outreach on vacant properties and focus marketing spend where it matters most.