Can you tell a person's future in just one encounter?

Probably not, unless you're an ear-ringed gypsy fortune teller — or Larry O'Toole.

For Limerick-born O'Toole, who has spent a lifetime building his beloved $60m Boston moving business Gentle Giant, has an unorthodox interview process which usually tells him not just whether the prospective employee should be hired but also enables him to make a fair stab at how their life will pan out.

Sounds outlandish until you join the soft-spoken, lanky rower (the Gentle Giant moniker didn't come from the wind) turned entrepreneur on his morning workouts up the tiers at Harvard Stadium — from sorry experience, an ordeal tougher than the New York marathon — with his existing and putative team members. Complete the 37 tiers (hope ChatGPT hasn't let me down there) in under 40 minutes and you're certainly fit enough to join the Gentle Giant moving crew. However, you might take 50 minutes and still get the O'Toole nod for he's a big fan of identifying talent not yet fully developed — as long as he has a willing partner to work with.

That's because he's a firm believer in the power of a small business to deliver profits to the owner of course but also to provide good, breadwinner earning jobs and impact positively on the community in which it operates. It's may sound a little clichéd to those who haven't commissioned Gentle Giant's services – which started with employee number one Larry, a hired van and a wing and a prayer back in the early eighties — but of course observing a higher mission also translates into sterling customer care. 

In his new book, Heavy Lifting, a much-needed addition to his regular contributions as a commentator in the famed Inc. magazine, O'Toole leads with his heart. Or to be precise, with Honesty, Enthusiasm, Above and Beyond, Respect and Teamwork.

That's an ambitious acronym to adopt as your founding statement but over ten chapters speckled with instructive memories of moving stuff for folks, often at vulnerable or pivotal moments in their lives, O'Toole shows why his business thrived on word-of-mouth. 

Over five decades on the moving frontlines, O'Toole walked the walk, seeking out the best people and paying them well but also, as you might expect from a perennially positive person, creating "an environment free from slackers and whiners". 

Explains the author: "As for going above-and-beyond, that's my nature. if you have the power to improve someone's life a little, why wouldn't you do that? If you can improve it a lot, even if it takes a little longer or costs a few dollars more isn't that even better?"

Wearing his heart (and his HEART) on his sleeve, O'Toole built a business which now stretches across America — with, at last count, 13 branches in New England and a presence in 11 other states. One suspects it's only his unshakeable integrity and his unwillingness to cut corners which prevented Gentle Giant becoming the Starbucks of moving companies. For this writer, that's a good thing — going big is the quickest way to making megabucks but it's also the road to perdition when it comes to looking after customers. Does anyone believe a moving behemoth could boast, as O'Toole does, that in five decades, "Gentle Giant has never made a late payment"?

A sucker for a seanachaí, I particularly enjoyed the anecdotes in Heavy Lifting — about moving victims of domestic violence, about removing windows to swing in a grand piano to a top-floor apartment, about moving a bedridden mum right along with her daughter's furniture — but it's probably the stories of building a small business and hiring the right staff which resonated most. 

I don't have a Harvard Stadium to fall back on but I suspect all entrepreneurs have their own version which, as O'Toole writes, is "a pretty good predictor of performance on the job". Adding: "People who attack the steps with determination and grit will — in the end — ride high with pride of personal and team achievement. They will make wonderful Gentle Giant movers. They are people who won't quit. They won't whine or complain. When it feels as though they have reached the end of their strength and resources, they will dig deeper....These are the people I want to work with every day.....We certainly do not reject people who are slower (than 40 minutes) even much slower. It is true that we are assessing physical fitness. Much more importantly, we are assessing intensity of the effort expended. Grit and determination are prerequisites."

It's a long way from shouldering a piano singlehandedly up three flights of stairs or swinging an armoire through a fourth-floor window to presiding over a national business respected in every market in which it operates. O'Toole only managed that feat by staying grounded and, ultimately, living gospel he preaches with authenticity and not a little emotion in this memorable memoir. I'm no fortune teller but I can certainly predict that this book will be read and treasured by anyone who believes in the power of small businesss to transform lives and build communities. 

Heavy Lifting - Building Business with a Giant Heart. Larry O'Toole. Priory Grove Publishing.