Willing to try – when others won’t 

Ed Katz founded IOMI – the International Office Moving Institute – to teach other moving companies how to do what he’d learned to do from running his own removal business.

Decades ago, a massive fire broke out at an oil refinery. Flames leapt hundreds of feet skyward, and thick black smoke swallowed the sky. The heat was so fierce that responding fire crews held back a full block away, hoping the blaze might weaken before they had to approach. But instead, the fire kept spreading, edging closer to a cluster of fuel tanks that could turn the whole scene catastrophic.  

Then, out of nowhere, one truck came barrelling down the road. Tyres shrieking, it skidded to a stop right at the foot of the fire. The crew leapt out and threw themselves into fighting the flames at close range. Seeing this, the other crews found their courage too, pulling in behind and joining the fight. Together, they got the fire under control just before it could reach the tanks.  

Later, the town held a ceremony to recognise the driver of that first truck – the one who hadn’t hesitated. The mayor addressed him personally: “Captain, because of you, we didn’t lose property, and we may not have lost lives either. What can we do to show our gratitude?” 

The captain thought about it for only a second. “Well, sir,” he said, “you could start by fixing my brakes.”  

It turns out the driver wasn’t fearless at all. His brakes had failed, and he couldn’t stop the truck – so he ended up exactly where he needed to be, by accident. 

The real lesson here isn’t about courage. The captain didn’t charge the fire because he was braver than everyone else. He ended up closest to the flames because something broke, and instead of panicking, he worked with what he had. 

That’s a much more useful lesson than “be fearless”. Many breakthroughs don’t come from gritting your teeth and pushing through what you’re bad at. They come from being honest about what isn’t working, and then being willing to go somewhere new – “because of it”, not “in spite of it”. 

This story and lesson is told by Ed Katz, founder of IOMI. Ed started out in residential moving, like most movers do, running his own company, Peachtree Movers, in Atlanta, USA. But he found he couldn’t handle the emotional weight that comes with it – the stress, the sentimental attachments, the hand-holding families need when their whole life is getting packed into a truck. For a lot of people, that would look like a dead end. 

Instead, Ed treated it as information. He stopped doing residential moves and put all of his focus into one goal: becoming the best local office mover in Atlanta. It’s a narrower, more operationally demanding niche – but far less emotionally draining, and most competitors weren’t set up to do it well. Most office moves happen at night, on weekends, and over holidays, when the buildings are empty – and most competitors simply didn’t want to work those hours. While everyone else stayed parked a block away in the crowded residential market, Ed drove straight into a fire nobody else wanted to fight, sharpened Peachtree Movers into a specialist rather than a generalist, and became the expert at it. That focus became the foundation he later built IOMI on. 

In 2000, Ed sold Peachtree Movers and devoted himself to something bigger: teaching other moving companies how to do what he’d learned to do so well. That became IOMI – the International Office Moving Institute. 

IOMI teaches movers how to estimate office moves accurately, using a proprietary man-hour formula built specifically for office moves – a sharp departure from the unreliable ‘cube and pounds’ formula the residential world relies on. That precision is what lets movers trained by IOMI finish jobs on time, for the price they quoted. IOMI also teaches how to minimise the risk of damage to clients’ furniture, electronics, and the buildings themselves – floors, walls, doors, elevators – along with safer methods that reduce the chance of worker injury on the job. 

The results speak for themselves. IOMI didn’t succeed because Ed pushed through his weaknesses. It succeeded because he was honest about them, and let that honesty point him toward the one lane where he could actually win – and then he spent his career teaching others how to find that same lane. 

What’s the takeaway?  Acts of heroism – and, just as often, acts of business success – tend to start the same way: one person is willing to try something when everyone else is standing back. 

Sometimes that willingness looks like courage. Sometimes it just looks like admitting your brakes are shot, and figuring out what to do about it. Either way, the person who moves is the one who ends up closest to the opportunity everyone else was too cautious, too comfortable, or too stuck to go after. 

Ed didn’t need to be tougher. He needed to be honest – and willing to go where that honesty led. 

Contact Ed Katz on edkatz@officemoves.com or visit IOMI’s website.

Click here to view this article and other related articles in the magazine