The Accidental Author: Robert Esposito on Publishing a Book That’s Changing the Moving Industry | Moving Storage Series

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Rob Esposito, published author of Nobody Move and Founder of Relocators. He founded his company Relocators in 2008, which provides end-to-end moving services that combine emotional and logistical support.

They are known for their unique approach, offering practical tips to ease the stress of packing, transitioning, and everything in between. Rob brings a rich background in the moving industry, holding a bachelor’s degree in human resource management. Now, Rob is a second-time guest here on the show. When you’re done listening to this episode, I highly recommend you check out his original interview. We invited him back because he has some crazy stories to share about his book deal unfolded in the wild ride he’s been on since its release.

The book is called Nobody Move, without reading this, which gained attention for its helpful strategies and real-life stories. He hosted a gala to launch the book, drawing industry experts and clients from around the region. Recognized as a leader in moving and estate sales services, Rob’s passion for helping people navigate big-life transitions shines in all he does. Over the years, he has worked tirelessly to ensure every client receives personal attention and reliable guidance. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, AdVac Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company, and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefitsagency.com. Back to our guest today, the president of Relocators and published author of Nobody Move, without reading this, Rob Esposito. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Rob Esposito: I appreciate you welcoming me again, Anthony, and it’s always a great pleasure to talk to you.

Anthony Codispoti: All right. Okay, so, Rob, I want to spend most of our time talking about the book, but for those who haven’t heard your first interview, let’s give sort of the quick version of how Relocators came to be and what it is that you guys do there. Okay. Yeah.

Rob Esposito: So, Relocators is at its most basic level, it’s a moving company, but we’re much more than that. We try to prod ourselves on being a home transition company, meaning my mother owned an estate sale when I was growing up, and I saw helping her that the industry was fragmented, and I tried to provide an end-to-end service. So what we do is moving cleanouts, estate sales, online auctions. Now we do restoration packouts, which is another level of stressful moving that we try to cater to, and we do out-of-state moving as well. And we try to be one call to handle the entire transition out of a house.

Anthony Codispoti: So restoration packouts, that is somebody’s house is flooded or mold damage or something, get a clear everything out so it can be clean?

Rob Esposito: Exactly. Fire, water, puff backs, things like that. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti: So, one of your core values is making homes closing ready. Can you talk more about that, how you ensure that your team remains focused on that goal from that first consultation all the way through that final walkthrough? Yes.

Rob Esposito: So, from the first consultation, what we do is try to give you a game plan on what the best steps will be to transition, and everyone is different. We have what we call the reload roadmap, where we try to align which services you need at which time. Obviously, in a perfect world, things should be done in a certain order, but it’s not a perfect world, so we try to adapt to what your needs are, and as we go through the process, we try to save you as much money on each level of service as possible.

And money might also be the emotional stress and toll it puts on you. So, we try to weigh that with you, and then at the end, we do a clean out, which donates all the donation stuff in your home, gets you a tax receipt, and allows the house to be broom swept in what we call a walkthrough ready. Basically, if you took the entire property, turned it upside down, whatever falls out should be organic only, like firewood in the back, anything that’s not organic should be gone unless it’s something like skylight tools or something for the house that’s supposed to be left in the house. Nothing should be loose.

Anthony Codispoti: And before we met, Rob, I didn’t realize that there were companies that do such an end-to-end service. We had to clean out my grandparents’ house a few years ago, and there was a lot of work that my family and I had to do ourselves in addition to the estate sale company and the moving company and all of that. What you’re talking about sounds like one of those staples easy buttons.

Rob Esposito: It’s great analogy. It’s one call and it all gets taken care of. I wish it were that easy, but yes, that’s what we try to strive to make.

Anthony Codispoti: It’s that easy for the customer, because we push that button, we call relocators, and you guys take care of all that from top to top. That’s

Rob Esposito: exactly who we try to be.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, so you’ve been in the industry over 17 years. What was an experience along the way that gave you the idea to write this book?

Rob Esposito: The idea to write the book was, it came from a speaking event I did, and I saw how the emotional factors that go into transitioning out of a home are the real crux of the issue, whereas when I started out seeing that the industry was fragmented, I thought was the real issue, which it is a major issue, but it’s so much deeper than that. The actual logistical transition, that’s where we focus the stress, but it’s not really the stress. The stress is the entire way. What I say now is the stress is from when your last child leaves for college and you think your house might be too big, all the way through months and years, you decide to make the move, the logistical move, and then months or years later until you’re settled with the right barber shop and beauty parlor. That’s the stress. I think that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about the stress of transitioning. It’s knowing that you’re settled and solid.

Anthony Codispoti: It does make sense, but it’s interesting to me that somebody who’s got a business of moving stuff for people would get to understand that level of the psychology of everything that’s going on before and after the fact. You must really get to know your clients pretty well.

Rob Esposito: Yes, naturally, I’ve always been a super human condition observer and I’ve always paid very close attention. A people watcher almost. As you said, I have a degree in psych pretty much with the humor relations. You see people at their worst. You see people when the stress is so mounted and after a while you realize, wow, this is not unique.

One of the first four or five people that read the book, there’s one of the first few lines, like couple paragraphs in, is the things we go through, the stresses we go through in life often feel unique to our own experiences, but their comment and having an educated approach allows you to maneuver them properly.

Anthony Codispoti: You said the idea first came about when you were giving a talk. Was the talk specifically on this topic or did somebody come up to you afterwards and that fueled the idea?

Rob Esposito: Yes. I just did a speech at the gala where one of the main focuses is I learned my truth in a lie. What I meant by that is my partner had went to the speak event and he called me the next day and I went to thank him for coming and he kind of cut me off to say how proud he was and he’s like, why are you doing this?

Do you want to be an author? And I was like, no, no way. I never thought of that.

And as I said that, I’m like, wait a second, did I ever think of that? And I just felt like I was lying to him. He’s not someone I’d ever lie to.

I don’t lie in general. And from that I started harboring that thought. Initially it was for business though.

I wanted to help business owners because I was frustrated with the idea that you hear the American dream is dead. That to me seems so dangerous for somebody starting out. And that’s what I planned on doing. And at first I wanted to deal with the emotional side of moving.

That was the other gripe I had in business and it just randomly self-published book when I ended up getting the contract. So that’s the one that kind of created the inertia.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay. So kind of walk us through how this unfolded then. You gave this talk, apparently it was very well received and your partner was like, hey, why are you doing this? Like you want to be an author? And that’s not. And then as soon as you said it, you were like, hang on, that felt wrong.

Rob Esposito: Wait till I lie to him? Yeah, exactly. That answer didn’t feel true to me. So here, let’s kind of explore that. And so from that point, how long ago was that conversation? So the speak was July of 23. The conversation was the next day. And by November, so a year and a couple of months ago, I had started writing the initial self-published book. Okay. Yes. From there.

Anthony Codispoti: And walk us through that process. Self, you’re writing a book. Like you’ve probably never written a book before, I’m going to guess. Like how did you have a framework? Did you have somebody coaching you through this? You just kind of winging it on your own?

Rob Esposito: So as a kid, and that’s where the law comes in, I thought back, I was like, well, you know, I try to write screenplays when I was like 15, but I don’t even remember that I ever did that until that question. You know, and I had asked my publicist if he knew a ghost writer and he said, he introduced me to a lady that had interviewed me and I had a bunch of intimate zooms with her.

And my plan was to make this self-published book because I was frustrated, you know, with the real estate industry as a whole, that they support clients. They give closing gifts at the end, but nobody’s preparing people. Nobody’s giving sign on gifts or listing gifts that actually have function as far as preparing them for what they’re about to go through. So I was just going to write this book with her to give it out. And my whole theory was everyone says you can’t make money with books, which I agree. Everybody says you can’t get published as a new author, you know, and not just self-publish, which is also something I kind of agreed with. And my theory was I would write this book, I would buy it off myself, give it away for free. My estimators would then have a competitive edge. And in a year or two, I could take these sales and I can put it with like other features I’ve had in the paper and maybe broke, have a better chance of brokering a book deal with an agent, you know. And that was like my genius plan to go forward with this.

Anthony Codispoti: I mean, it seems pretty sensible. I know a lot of entrepreneurs who have either on their own or worked with a ghost writer to publish a book that, you know, helps to establish themselves as an authority.

They sell slash give away these books. And it’s a great mechanism to meet people, to generate leads for their main business. And so you’re saying this was the original idea, but at some point along the way, the idea changed?

Rob Esposito: Yes, I went out to lunch with a gentleman, Ron Sanertino, old friend, kind of one of those situations where we were trying to go out to lunch for years through COVID, you know, we had been close. We directed networking groups together. And finally, it was one of those days where we were so busy and I was like, let me just relax and not cancel this one, you know, because you always cancel because you’re always too busy. And we had like a four hour lunch and a 10 minute conversation from that sparked the next day he called and he said, hey, I was explaining your concept to a publisher. I know.

And she wants to get on the phone with you. And basically he’s a top real estate agent and he also spent over a decade in Hollywood. And, you know, he’s manages the Snyder and he’s put West Coast choppers and worked on Sons of Anarchy. So he had, he was like the perfect mix that when he heard this concept, he was like, wait a second, there’s something there. Nobody’s talking about this, you know. So that kind of, it wasn’t, I was just talking to him about it as a friend, you know, that day.

Anthony Codispoti: And so what’s his name? Ron Serrentino. Ron. And so Ron kind of helped plant the seed or did he become a part of actually getting this book published through another means?

Rob Esposito: He just made a connection to a publisher, you know, which she then got on the phone with me and she offered me like a five book contract like hybrid deal where, you know, she would publish me in this space. And that’s where we’re at. That’s how it kind of grew.

Anthony Codispoti: Wait, she offered you a five book deal as somebody who had never, I mean, you had one book that was self published, but. The 10,000 word book. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Esposito: And so I was like two weeks away from publishing, self publishing.

Anthony Codispoti: It just wasn’t even out.

Rob Esposito: No, it was in the first round of three rounds of editing from an online website. I, you know, where, where you can hire agents to edit books. I had, I was in one of three rounds of editing.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay. So the book had not even been published yet. No. And this agent, Michu, you guys had some conversations. She probably sees the draft of that book and she offers you a five book deal.

Rob Esposito: She said she’d published five books. Yes. It’s, it’s a hybrid. It’s a minor, but at the same time she’s publishing it. I’m not paying for it. So yes, that’s what happened. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti: So there’s something missing here. How do you go from unheard of, never published before to, hey, we’re going to publish this book for you. And I want you to come up with, you know, a total of at least five books.

Rob Esposito: The topic, I don’t think it’s been addressed. The way it was being written, I think had a lot to do with it and Ron’s connection. I think those three things, we kind of hit it off and saw like that there’s no real authority in this space, not even that there’s no authority. Nobody’s really talking about it from this angle.

You know, you’re talking about it from a DIY angle or, you know, how to make the move easier the moving day, but nobody’s talking about like all the emotional part of it, the psychological part of it. And so from there, I actually, on my own, spent a lot of money. I hired a British scholar to be my ghost writer to bring it from 10 to 80,000 words, which I went to hand it in three months later and I, it was unrecognizable. It was out of voice. I wound up pretty much tossing it and rewriting the entire thing in six weeks by myself.

All 80,000 words. And from there, that’s when I hit, like that’s when I hit a groove. I created this structure where it’s like the horror story, the advice, the real world hacks, the conclusion pulled in an expert or a celebrity expert or a celebrity with experience that I had previously moved as a feature. And we did that for like 20 chapters.

I did that for like 20 chapters. We created like over 50 memes, which the memes are so cool, like they’re super like comical. And just the whole way it’s written, I can say now with confidence, like the reviews that have come back from journals or writers, they’ve loved this style because it’s a really cool, like broken up style of writing.

Anthony Codispoti: It’s easy for people to read and digest. I mean, we’ve got short attention spans and so it can’t just be like pages and pages and pages of text with nothing to kind of break it up.

Rob Esposito: Exactly. Exactly. You kind of look for, you’re like, you’re going through it. You hear this horror story. You love this story. You hear my spin on it. And whether you read the hacks or not, it doesn’t matter because that’s more utility. And then from there, you’re excited for the next horror story. You know, and it does that like for over 20 chapters, 19 chapters, but then a prologue, epilogue, overarching stuff. So it’s pretty cool.

Anthony Codispoti: So I’ve worked with some copywriters and different projects in the past. And even when I end up changing, you know, a fair bit of the content, for me anyways, it’s been helpful to have that starting point of something to work from and edit. Was that still the case with you when you got that 80,000 words back or was it so off that you just had to completely throw it out the window?

Rob Esposito: It was 100% both. And what I mean by that is I removed like probably 20,000 to 30,000 appendices completely that we had added, which were super researchy. I moved, I removed a lot of other words as well, but I had the basis to just rewrite. So every single section, I basically took it, rewrote it, put it back in. And I just did that the entire way.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay. And so, so July 2023 was when this speech happened, conversation with your partner, you realized, Hey, maybe this is something I want to do. November of 2023, you’re pretty close to being ready to self publish this book. And then you meet with your friend who introduces you to this agent, you realize you’re going to take a different path. You hire the ghostwriter, you know, take you from 10,000 to 80,000 words, then you end up rewriting it because the voice is wrong and it just, just doesn’t, the layout isn’t correct.

It’s not what you want. So you get that tweaked, you get that completely in your voice and the way that you want it, that process took six weeks. So where are we in the timeline now?

Rob Esposito: So the November was when I hired the first ghostwriter and we did like six months of very intimate Zooms, which brings us to April. So now we’re in July. I handed it in the very end of July and I had started writing it from the initial supposed hand in middle of June. So those six weeks over the summer. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti: And so then from June of 24 until we’re recording this middle of February 2025, walk us through some of the other steps that have happened in between. So you hand this back into your new agent. You’re like, Hey, here’s the product that I want to go forward with. And they say what?

Rob Esposito: So initially when I told her, I didn’t like it, I was panicking. I thought it had to be handed in and she corrected me that it was a timeline and not a contractual due date, which I didn’t really understand. At the time, so when she said that, she was pretty much like, listen, she had read the same story twice, the way it was and the way it was rewritten. And she was like, Rob, this isn’t apples to oranges. This is like apples to like cheese steaks.

Like they don’t compare. And those were like her exact words pretty much. And she was take as much time as you want. You know, there’s no time limit on art.

And that’s where like we created all these memes in house. I have a graphic designer that works for me and every whim I had and every idea he put these like amazing touches on and created, you know, this awesome way of like putting it in art after I’m telling certain things. And I actually got a call over the summer from D Schneider, who is Ron’s manager for 20 years. And ironically, Ron did not refer me today, which is crazy. And you you wind up reading about it because I asked him for a feature. And it only made sense to I had asked Snooki for a feature.

I moved her. I asked Lee Zeldin for a feature. And when I asked him, he didn’t just give me a few lines. He gave me an entire story about a moving horror that his father experienced 65 years ago, which in turn made me create a prologue and an epilogue for him with like overarching themes.

And that was all in the last seven days before I handed it in, which then I moved him from LA to North Carolina. And he came out to be like a spokesperson for relocaters. And on October 17th, we were filming the commercial. And the commercial is another crazy part of the story. Ron’s cousin jumped on a phone call with me in August end of August, early September, because I was having trouble finding a camera crew to film the commercial.

The estimates were insane. His cousin is an eight time Emmy winner. He’s got a Guinness World Record for the most bug tattoos. The guy’s incredible. He’s an angel, invests, he’s an entrepreneur himself. And he actually wound up hiring a film crew, negotiating it for less money, staying in New York instead of going back to LA for the winter for an extra month to write, direct and edit the commercial and allow me full use of his music library, which is like a part of every sitcom you’ve ever seen. And the guy’s just, we just hit it off. He loved the passion. He loved the project. And because of all that, Newsday and a bunch of papers picked up the filming of the commercial on October 17th and forced the book into pre-sale. Yeah, it was pretty crazy.

Anthony Codispoti: Forced the book into pre-sale.

Rob Esposito: Because they were talking about it in Newsday. So like now it was like, out, you

Anthony Codispoti: know, So now you have to set up a page where people could at least, you know, raise their hand and say, Hey, I want this.

Rob Esposito: Exactly. Yeah, literally that night, October 17.

Anthony Codispoti: October 17th, that was.

Rob Esposito: Yeah. Okay. Yep. And then the book came out January 15th. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti: So what happens between October 17th and January 15th? Were there other promotions going on? Other events?

Rob Esposito: Lots and lots of catch up. Lots and lots of catch up. And we were doing a lot of social media advertising and we realized that, you know, the best way to do it would be to do a launch, which we set up a book launch for January 12th, which wound up we brought in the girls from selling the city, which was at the time with the number three show on Netflix in January. And a few other people came. We wound up having like six to 700 people.

The Gala was pretty amazing. We did a whole like live show with a forum with the Netflix girls and a forum with us about the commercial. We premiered the D Schneider commercial, which it still is. It’ll be released March 3rd, but we only showed it to people at the Gala. And it’s pretty cool because the filming of the commercial for the book made all the papers and the Gala was on the news all day the next day. Channel 12 played it the entire day. So it was pretty cool to see the party made the evening news and the commercial made the paper. So the book wasn’t even out yet.

Anthony Codispoti: So who I mean, that’s a that’s a big event to pull together six or 700 people, all the press, all the celebrities, the planning to show the commercial there and everything in between. Who helped you with that?

Rob Esposito: Honestly, my staff the most. It was really done in-house. There was the 10 rental company is a best friend of mine, a lifelong friend. Although he don’t do party planning, he was a huge part of it with me. The Magnificent, they do like high end wedding tents and stuff.

And I think it was more me pushing him to like, hey, we could do this together. And Vincent’s my partner’s restaurant. They really helped out with the food and all that. But we had some great enter.

We had DJ Cristaval, which is like an international female DJ. And we had a lot of great vendors helping us out. But it was entirely done in-house. We designed it too. And the design of it was incredible. It was the burning of Alexandria was the theme, which everyone was like, I don’t understand where you’re going with this. And the whole concept was like the loss of knowledge, like the human symbol of lost knowledge. And the theme just everyone were black and with everything going on with Diddy and the white parties, it really was like almost comical in some ways. Like it was a black party, but everybody looked outstanding. And the design was pretty incredible.

Anthony Codispoti: So the burning of Alexandria, the huge library resource that was lost hundreds of years ago. And so the point that you were trying to make with that theme is we don’t want to lose this knowledge. Like how can we kind of hold on to our knowledge that we’ve accumulated?

Rob Esposito: Yes, exactly. So like we actually burned samples of the books during my speech at the end, which played on major video walls. And then as I ended and start talking about lines in the book or talking about reciting stuff from the book, it burns backwards to whole. So it was a pretty cool effect. Yeah. Yeah. Then like people that were in the book or were mentioned or wore a piece of red.

So you’ll see a sea of black, but you’ll see like a red pocket, whatever, you know, with your suit or a red tie or red shoes or something like that. So it was pretty cool.

Anthony Codispoti: So why was the local news covering this? Because all the celebrities, because you’re kind of a big deal there locally or what was it?

Rob Esposito: I think all, you know, the Netflix people, it was, you know, six, seven hundred. I got to say that I didn’t know until the next day that at like what I was doing with the party. Like maybe it was ignorance or, you know, like dumb luck, but like I didn’t realize like how big of a deal it was. I might be most proud of that party of anything I’ve done. Like I feel pride of that and I don’t usually like the feedback I got from people and people in the event industry who are like, hey, the top people, you know, they max out at 3, 350 for a bar mitzvah in a hole.

You put 650 people through a tent in 20 degree weather. Like that doesn’t happen, you know? I didn’t realize that that didn’t register. So thank God because I might not have done it. You knew what you were getting into. Yeah, exactly.

Anthony Codispoti: So, okay, so that’s pretty impressive. Now you’ve got even more attention for the book. Now, so what is the plan with the book going forward? What do you want to do with this? It’s not, it seems like you’ve shifted away from this idea like it’s just this lead gen mechanism for you.

Rob Esposito: Yes, so the self-published book was gonna be lead gen strictly to help people and now is always our focus. Now, because of, it’s almost like the universe responded and now it becomes obligatory to really do that. Do something about it, do something with it. And that’s kind of the torch I bear now internally.

That’s what I feel like, all right, I gotta figure out how to get this out. And in order to do that, what we’re doing is we’ve created like this whole concept of a realtor empowerment program. And what that pretty much does is we’re gonna create care packages to give to realtors completely for free. And what we were doing prior is realtors were able to buy 50 packs of the book and customize the first page to put their headshot and a personalized message to give a sign on or listing gifts.

And we sold about nine or 11 of them in pre-sales, a couple of therapists, a couple of mortgage bankers, few realtors, a restoration company. And what they’re doing is they’re handing them out to prepare people and we realize, although the book is the value, we need a pretty package to put it in. And what we’re about to launch is these care packages, which will be funded by the other referral sources in the book, meaning like a realtor can pick their personal network and each a mortgage person can be on page three and a title on page four and a mover on page five. And that’s how the book will be funded. It’ll be free for the realtor and you create this safe network for people of referral sources for what they need at this point.

And you give the client this added value, which gives you a competitive edge on a listing appointment, as well as like signing on and showing the customer that, hey, you’re here to prepare them for what they’re about to go through.

Anthony Codispoti: Do you have a, one of these care packages we could take a look at?

Rob Esposito: Sure, I have been.

Anthony Codispoti: Let me see if I understood correctly what you’re doing. So these are books that, you’re not printing a million copies all at once. You’re taking pre-orders and you’re allowing your clients to customize parts of the content so that some of the relevant resources that you wanna refer people to are specific to that geography. So they’re very helpful to the person in Poughkeepsie that is reading that book and moving from that location. And they can say, oh, here’s somebody I can call for this service and that service. Am I understanding that correctly?

Rob Esposito: Yes, and this is the care package. What it would all have is the book which has customized first five pages, the realtor, whichever and then whichever three or four or more vendors in their network that they choose to purchase the next few pages off of. And they can then refer it. It’s like basically saying to an industry or me as a mover, hey, for X amount of dollars, I’m gonna hand your flyer, your most trusted referral source, will hand your flyer to your client at the time they need you. And we’re also providing this client immense value together. And the care package will come with like color coded stickers which save hundreds, if not thousands on a move, a post move punch list, a moving to do list, journal for memories, a bookmark. And it’ll be like a nice offering, of course, along with the book. I’ll show you a picture of like the back just to give you an idea of where like our hazard.

Anthony Codispoti: So just a book, it’s a how to guide on, hey, I’m getting ready to move, what do I need to do?

Rob Esposito: Exactly, and this is the back cover of the book. The front would be a picture of the book and a picture with whatever marketing that the realtor wants on half the front. And the back is, you know, it says like care package to junk drawer because hire a mover who understands that the junk box containing all movie stubs from the first day may be more valuable than your jewelry box. It’s like one of the quotes in the book.

Anthony Codispoti: And so the realtor is getting these care packages paid for by the suppliers that are being referenced in the customized portion of the book.

Rob Esposito: Exactly, so they all pool their money to get it, give it to the realtor who’s pretty much nine times out of 10 in the direct first contact between the client and now they have this safe network of people who they can utilize based on the realtor’s recommendation of the people in the book.

Anthony Codispoti: How did that idea come about? A lot of my good ideas, I kind of borrow from a different industry or something that somebody else has been doing. Where did you see this kind of being done?

Rob Esposito: See it, we didn’t. So it was a mixture of a couple of things. This is the Nobody Move website and you can see, you know, people that had purchased the first page, it kind of looks like that. And when we did the Gala, there was a lot of sponsors who then we put them in a special Gala edition book. This is a picture from the Gala. And what happened was the people at the Gala all just came up to us all night like, hey, we need to be in the book, how did you do this? You know, like, how come we didn’t know? Everybody knew that’s the funny thing.

Of course, everybody knew about the sponsorship, but until they saw it for the first time, they didn’t buy into it. So from there, we were like playing with ideas of how do we make it just, you know, cause at the time it was just a realtor or just a mortgage banker or just a one person who bought them. And we’re like, how do we do this on a bigger scale? And it kind of married all the ideas together.

Anthony Codispoti: It’s pretty cool. And so what has the response been from the realtor industry as they are starting to hear about this?

Rob Esposito: You’re number one. It’s not, we’re prelaunch right now. Yes, we’re prelaunch right now. Okay, so we’re selling a 50 back still and we’re kind of telling people and they get it, but we don’t have prototypes. So we’re keeping it like very low key.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, so is there pricing set yet? Is there an order page for people? Like if people who hear this or watch this, how do they raise their hand and say, I want more info?

Rob Esposito: So there’s zoom links that can be set up and we have a calendar. There is a pricing page and we have a primary and secondary referral partners. But what we do is we go through with them and they can email Robert at usrelocators.com to set up a zoom link and we’ll attach a calendar and we’ll explain the whole process to them. Right now what we’re doing is we’re capturing anybody who buys the original 50 pack that we’re offering and we’re telling them that this is coming out and to hold off a bit and explaining it to them. And then once we have an actual prototype the end of this week, that’s when we’re gonna start offering to them live.

Anthony Codispoti: So by the time people hear this episode, we’re recording this on February 18th, 2025. Takes about four or five weeks to come out. So by the time this is out. Should just be launched. Should just be launched. And so what was the different pricing there? I saw primary versus secondary. What does that mean?

Rob Esposito: Yeah, so basically what we tried to do is make it for a primary, which are the people that are guaranteed services needed with the purchase or sale of a home. It’s $30 per lead, so $30 per book. And it’s $1,500 for a full page, like a full page three or a full page four. And that breaks down into $30 per lead. And then for the second theories, it’s a third of the price, it’s $10.

And you get a half page. Those are all the industries that a homeowner might need, but it’s not necessarily advantageous for them with the buying or selling of the home, like a pool guy or a roofer or a carpenter, things of that nature.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, so I’m starting to wrap my head around this model, Rob, and I gotta tell you, it sounds kind of genius. Like my brain’s already working like what other industries could people do a similar type of concept in?

Because, I mean, let’s face it, like, I mean, advertising, it works, it’s expensive, it’s hard to measure, the avenues that have worked in the past continue to become more expensive. And what you’re describing here is, I mean, on the surface anyways, it seems like a pretty brilliant way to get in front of people at the time that they most need your services and to do it in a way that feels like an authentic referral. Not just I got this random mailer, I don’t know who this person is, I don’t know how they came to me, I don’t know anything about them, but now my realtor gave me this book, and I need the services X, Y, and Z, and my realtor is saying, hey, these are people that I know and I vet it.

Rob Esposito: Yes, and Anthony, the crazy part about it is, it’s funny you say that too, because the first few people I called were very prominent real estate educators that I know, and I was basically called them to my office, like it was the underground basement of Apple, and I’m like, break this for me, please explain to me why this doesn’t work, and they were like, I’m like, I know I’m not that smart, I have no idea.

And I’m like, can you break this? And we played with certain tweaks, but I’m hoping that’s the effect it has if for nothing else than to really force the industry into helping clients, and that’s the main focus, it’s always been the main focus. Obviously profits need to be made in order to do that and to enable that, but that wasn’t even thought about until a year and a half into this, like maybe a month or two ago. So the concept is also a third tier to this of national solar companies or Home Depot or Lowe’s or major, major brands who can latch on and say, hey, we’re gonna take every page nine for every custom copy nationwide. So that’s hopefully where we get to, and at that point, we can probably make it even more lucrative to the people in the industry, the mom and pop people that’ll be handing it out.

Anthony Codispoti: And so what’s gonna be the minimum purchase amount? Is it 50 books?

Rob Esposito: That’s publisher, yeah, that’s got nothing to do with us. In order to customize a book, we need the order 50.

Anthony Codispoti: You need 50, yeah.

Rob Esposito: Then that was like driving to Maryland and begging.

Anthony Codispoti: You know, like it was a big deal. I was gonna say, cause that’s a small run, right? Yeah, yeah. That’s a really small run when it comes to publishing.

Rob Esposito: Exactly. So obviously these books are being digitally published. Yeah, printed, yeah. I’m not sure, I believe so.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, yeah, I mean, it’s such a small batch. That’s impressive to be able to, like you said, you had to beg to get that. Yes. Okay, so here you are kind of a little bit in limbo, kind of waiting, maybe limbo is the wrong word. Maybe there’s tons of stuff that you’re doing behind the scenes, but you’re kind of waiting for this care package prototype to come about. And what else is kind of going on behind the scenes?

Rob Esposito: Pretty much that we’re doing a lot of social media advertising. We’re doing a lot of networking, a lot of speaking ever since the Gala speech and the Gala event. You know, I’ve been doing a lot of, you know, like realtor speaking and live speaking, but mostly just talking about, you know, the book and what the plan is for it prior to the care package plan, like the customizable plan.

And we started a book club, which it actually gonna be the first one tomorrow. It’s a Zoom that’s open nationally. And we can see it developing into something that’s more like a CE credit or where realtors can actually come to get credits. But right now it’s strictly like pay it forward, education, help people with what their clients are probably going through. And basically we wanna be able to say like, hey, what we tell you if you’re liquidating a house for yourself, a child at home, if your parent dies, is gonna be different than what we tell you if you’re liquidating a house for what your husband parent dies. You know, and like what factors you’re gonna feel different about those two scenarios, even though they’re the same scenario.

Anthony Codispoti: So is the, we’ve sort of, obviously we’ve touched on sort of the topics and the content of the book, but we’ve been speaking a lot more about some of the promotions and sort of the business idea behind how you’re gonna promote it and sell it and all the advertising revenue and all that. So let’s take a little bit of a deeper dive into the actual content of the book, Rob. I mean, you’ve talked about how moving is such a stressful event for people and they don’t know what they don’t know going into it, emotions are high. Like what is it that the book is kind of walking folks through that helps to reduce that stress for them?

Rob Esposito: The book explains to you like the idea, and I’ll just show you a couple of instances right here in the beginning. Like right when it opens up and these are the memes, like that meme is, you know, where else do strangers come and take everything out of your house? I could think of three criminals, the feds and moving. Like, you know, where, like it doesn’t really happen, but when you go to move, you don’t think about like hiring some, you know, high educated people. You think of it more like DIY, like rent a truck, kind of can do it yourself maybe.

You know, like your roofer or your deck builder is never gonna go through your private intimate draw, you know, like, and that’s what kind of makes it different. And the entire book is like that model, kind of explaining those different psychological perspectives. It goes through each topic, moving with pets, moving international, local moving, preparing to hire a mover. And it breaks down why an estimate for moving is different than like, hey, we’re gonna build a deck or we’re gonna build your roof. With a roofer, you know, it’s this many squares, it’s set, the only differential is how much plywood is rotted underneath, you know? I just know that I have a couple of best friends who own roofing companies, but with moving, like we don’t know the second location 90% of the time.

And a lot of times people don’t explain it correctly and they don’t even know if, hey, the building they’re going into, hey, the elevator’s right there, but wait, the mover has to do three laps around, go underneath and then come up, you know, to a special elevator that no one knows about. So there’s a lot left to chance. And the other part of that is like, the individual, if they have an emotional connection, especially when it’s because of somebody passing or a divorce, you have this like inner battle that wages that I think we all kind of have, some more prevalent, where like feelings of like grandma’s house and home, battle feelings of like late teens, promiscuity and backpacking through Europe. And like we personify that into objects when we go to decide what we want to keep or what we want to get rid of each time we transition, because that’s when it comes up. You get it? I do. Am I too far out there? No. Yeah, but that’s kind of where it goes.

Anthony Codispoti: You know, as I hear you talk about it, it makes a lot of sense because, you know, if you think about the top most stressful events that can happen in somebody’s life, new job, death of a loved one, moving, you know, these are all kind of top of the list.

And it could be that you’re dealing with a couple of those with somebody, right? You’re moving because this is the death of a loved one. You’re moving because there’s a change of job. And so you’ve got sort of compounding stresses there. And this isn’t something that we do a lot. Most of us. The four stories are the best. Say that again?

Rob Esposito: The divorce stories are absolutely the best. Why is that? Just entertainment-wise in the book.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, so you’ve got a lot of like crazy client stories in there.

Rob Esposito: Like the stuff people do through a divorce is so irrational and logic-defying that like, I mean, it’s unbelievable. It really is.

Anthony Codispoti: So I guess we should point out that even as we’re recording this in the middle of February, the book is available for sale now on Amazon. It’s just the care package version that’s gonna get customized with all the extras in it. That’s what is coming.

Rob Esposito: And the custom copies are available too if you just want the book.

Anthony Codispoti: Just the book, but not the care package. You can get the customized copy of just the book right now. Okay, so let’s wet people’s whistle a little bit more here. Maybe share one or two of these juicy stories that they’ll find in the book.

Rob Esposito: Sure, one gentleman, his parents owned a bungalow on a North Shore and like kind of like, not a beach town, but like by the water. And you can see as he got successful when he inherited it, each like decade extension. Like it was a hodgepodge of like the 90s glass and the 80s mirror and the 70s movie wall shared carpet. Like the house was huge now. And I had went on like three or four estimates leading up to the move. And then the day of the move, we showed up and he like stormed in the house and I was young.

It was like just starting out. And she had won the house, his parents house and the divorce and he won the contents. And he was like, if she’s getting the house, I’ll never forget, then there’ll be nothing in it. And I remember thinking like, not putting a math together, like what that means for me, the mover, but like we stayed there three weeks, like taking toilet bowls out and cabinets up the walls and pulling up carpets, not like rugs, not throw rugs like carpeting, you know?

And we just put it all in his warehouse. Like, I mean, you’ve never seen anything like it. Like I remember looking at my employee and being like, I can’t wait to see her face. I imagine seeing her face.

I’d love to see her face. And he just looked at me like, she not gonna be surprised. She’s divorced in him. She now, you know? And I remember like dying laughing when he said that. Like, yes, he’s right, probably.

Anthony Codispoti: And so how many of these wild stories are people gonna find in the book? A couple of them, a lot? At least 20, yeah. Okay, yeah. All right, so not only is there practical advice in here for what to do during a very uncertain and stressful time for a lot of people, but there’s also gonna be some really fun content.

Rob Esposito: Of what not to do. Of what not to do, yeah. Exactly. I don’t like this course. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: So obviously you’ve got a lot on your plate right now. This book is coming to be. You’re doing all the promotions. You’re working on the care package. But you’re an entrepreneur. Your mind is always thinking 12 steps ahead. If, you know, we reconnect in a couple of years, Rob, what are we celebrating? Like where do you want this to go beyond what we’ve just discussed here and sort of what’s coming and unfolding presently?

Rob Esposito: So this book, you know, it’s called Nobody Move without reading this. And without reading this is in parentheses on the bottom. And everybody, I had done an event with a therapist and she was like, this is like one of the best psychological books and a business owner was like, this is a great business book. And I was like, it’s not a business book.

And he was like, this is a business book. And basically what’s being said is that it’s not moving. It’s moving through life. So my plan now, just as of the last few weeks, I’m like two or three chapters into Nobody Move I barely can. And that’s gonna be the Elder Moves book, but it’s about growing old. And then I want to do a horror stories book about perseverance.

And I’m gonna follow that like moniker per se of like base it upon moving, but do it about the overarching, you know, like Elder Moves is growing old in its entirety. And that book’s gonna take you from moving as an empty nester to death, you know, and telling the idea of getting old.

Anthony Codispoti: And what’s the horror book idea?

Rob Esposito: About horror stories, like moving horror stories will be about perseverance, you know. I wanna do, yeah, I’ve actually been talking with a sex therapist in Boston about nobody move hard sex easy moves about relationships and like love and moving through divorce and kind of like the divorce book. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti: And so do you intend to follow kind of the same business model with each of those books where there’s a therapist or some other business person that is buying a chunk of these books and customizing them with their referral sources?

Rob Esposito: Exactly, assisted livings, estate sales, things of that nature and exactly, go right down that line. And the horror stories obviously is fun and you know, it shows a different side of the industry that most people aren’t privy to probably.

Anthony Codispoti: And is there an idea for a fifth book? Cause you mentioned you’ve got a five book agreement.

Rob Esposito: Yeah, I’m playing with like business moves right now cause I would ultimately wanna transition into writing about business and not from a grand scale strictly from like a more like the decision of, you know, getting a job and being an employee and doing something yourself. You know, I really wanna, I really wanna speak to that person, you know.

Anthony Codispoti: Well, I guess this is where, you know, to go back to, you know, your main business up to this point, relocators, this is why it’s so helpful that you’ve put such a great team in place there so that as you’re working on these other ideas, relocators is still moving along, humming along, like, that’s a good growth there.

Rob Esposito: Yes, yes. And you learn at different stages, like right now I’m learning that like, I think I might have said on your last podcast, like every level is, you know, you have it easy and then all of a sudden you build to a hard part and then you have a hard time and you build out of it and you gotta keep doing that and remind yourself it’ll get easy again. I think I’m at that level now where like, we run itself, we manage ourselves, but we’re not growing. So how do I get to the growing without me, you know, and I think that would be my next behemoth I’d have to tackle, you know, or figure out.

Anthony Codispoti: As you kind of look back over what’s taken place in the past, not quite two years, since the idea sort of first hatched. Do you just kind of like pinch yourself sometimes? Like, is this all really happening?

Rob Esposito: Yes, it’s like people, you know what it is? One, like everybody wants to talk about a book and everyone wants to talk about their book. And I get it because it’s like, do it, like just do it. Because now people will ask, well, where do you find a timer? It’s so hard, like, I just want to be locked in a room, right? I’d rather do that than anything, anything, you know, besides play with my kids, you know, but like that is more cathartic and comforting to me than anything else I could be doing. So it’s not like, where do you find a time? It’s like, how can I have the time?

Anthony Codispoti: You want to carve out more time for this book. Yeah, exactly. You really enjoy it, feed yourself.

Rob Esposito: Exactly, exactly.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah. And you’ve got the personality that you enjoy the promotion part of it and the growth part of it as well. Yes. Yeah. Well, I’m trying to figure out what’s a great way to wrap up this interview. We’ve covered a lot of really good ground here. Is there anything we haven’t touched on about this book or this experience?

Rob Esposito: I’ll tell you what we’re thinking for the next gala. All right. So Ron and Mike, the guy who helped me with the commercial and Ron the agent, they called me right after the gala and they were like, we got it.

We got it. Cause they thought I was nuts with my theme. Like they like, there was a day where like I put the burning of the books on Instagram and they like called me like big brother like, yo, I’m getting a hundred calls from people thinking this thing’s canceled. I’m like, what? They think that’s how I’d show anger. Are you kidding me?

Like burning my own books. We’re obviously doing this for the effect. And they’re like, we’ll do Pompeii. The eruption of Vesuvius. You know, everyone’s in the mud. They’re frozen. Nobody ever moves again. So that’s what we’re thinking for the next gala.

Anthony Codispoti: So how do you tie that in to the bigger point of the book?

Rob Esposito: I don’t know, but nobody moved. So we’re gonna figure that out.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah. All right, Rob. Well, once again, I want to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. It’s been a lot of fun to hear what you’ve been up to since our last call and can’t wait to reconnect in the future and see how all this is unfolding because it seemed like a pretty bright future.

Rob Esposito: Awesome. Thanks, Anthony. I appreciate it.

Anthony Codispoti: Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with Rob and I tonight.