One Thing Movers Should Start and One They Should Stop in 2026

Asked to close his episode with one thing movers should start and one they should stop in the second half of 2026, Hunter Munroe did not hedge. On the Snoball Effect Podcast, the VP of Sales at USA Home Listings and its new My Home Story platform gave two answers that pull in opposite directions and, together, describe how a mover should compete this year: start more outbound, and stop over-relying on AI.

Start: Outbound Cold Activity, Because Your Competition Already Is

Hunter’s start is blunt. “Start as much outbound cold activity that you can, ’cause your competition already is,” he said. He frames the market as survival of the fittest, and his warning is direct: “If you are still sitting there waiting for leads to come to you, there are businesses around you that are proactively finding where these leads are and meeting them where they’re at today.”

The mistake he wants movers to avoid is thinking outbound means only cold calls and cold emails. Those are part of it, but he pushed for something broader. “Get involved in your community, join networking groups, BNI groups, sponsor events, go shake realtors’ hands, go shake apartment managers’ hands,” he said, “so people know you, not just the business. They know you as a business owner.” His refrain was simple: you gotta go find people.

The digital cadence and the handshake reinforce each other. A postcard and a soft email put your brand in front of a seller, and a face-to-face relationship with the realtors and property managers who feed those sellers turns cold reach into warm introductions. Outbound in 2026 is both, running at the same time.

Start Also Means Building a Team That Can Sustain It

There is a catch to starting more outbound. It only works if the owner is not the only person doing everything, and Hunter was candid that this is where he personally failed. He described the trap of believing every function has to run through the owner: the damage claim expert, the ops person in the morning, the salesperson closing most of the deals. “It’s all gotta run through me, me, me, me, me,” he said. “And that works for a while, but you will eventually burn out. It’s not if, it’s when.”

He admitted he burned out and left moving because he never built a good team around himself. His prescription is to let go. “Growth can be had when we let go and we trust others to help our business grow, and we let them make mistakes, and we coach ’em anyways,” he said. A mover cannot start a real outbound motion if the owner is still the bottleneck for every job, which is why escaping the owner-operator trap is a prerequisite for growth, not a nice-to-have.

Stop: Over-Relying on AI

Hunter called his stop a little controversial, then said it anyway: stop over-relying on AI. He was careful to note this is not anti-technology. “AI has great application. I use it every day,” he said. The problem is where movers point it.

“The common consumer is not at a place where they’re gonna let a robot book the job for them, or they’re gonna give a robot their information to complete a transaction,” he said. “I don’t think we’re there yet.” His rule of thumb is a clean split of duties. “Let AI fuel your leads. Don’t let it fuel your booking and your actual sales process. That still needs to be human. That still needs to be actual relational.”

His reasoning is about the nature of the purchase. A move is not a DoorDash order. It is not swapping an HVAC unit. It is personal, because it is someone’s home and their safe place, so it has to stay a human interaction. As he put it, if you want that customer to connect with you, it better be you on the other end.

Why the Two Ideas Belong Together

At first glance, start more outbound and stop over-relying on AI seem unrelated. They are actually the same principle. Use technology to do more of the finding, the sorting, and the getting-in-front-of-people work, and reserve the human touch for the moment that actually earns trust. Let smart tools scale your reach. Let people close the relationship.

That balance is exactly how the best referral programs work, and it is grounded in how people actually decide. People refer and buy from people they trust, which is a matter of human behavior, not technology. Technology creates the scale. Humans create the trust. A mover who gets that split right can run aggressive outbound in 2026 without ever making a customer feel like they are talking to a robot.

The Takeaway

Hunter’s two-part answer is a strategy in a sentence. Go find people, and stay human when you do. Start the outbound activity your competitors are already running, build the team that lets you sustain it, and keep AI in the background where it belongs. The move itself is too personal to hand to a machine.