The Small Business Safari
Have you ever sat there and wondered "What am I doing here stuck in the concrete zoo of the corporate world?" Are you itching to get out? Chris Lalomia and his co-host Alan Wyatt traverse the jungle of entrepreneurship. Together they share their stories and help you explore the wild world of SCALING your business. With many years of owning their own small businesses, they love to give insight to the aspiring entrepreneur. So, are you ready to make the jump?
The Small Business Safari
Moving Titan Shares His Secrets for Elevating the Entire Industry | Wade Swikle
Wade has started a moving company, bought a moving company, franchised a moving company and has a podcast dedicated to helping his industry improve their service. Next up he is going to start a training program designed to help movers SCALE and IMPROVE their business. Listening to this podcast will level up your game in your business, even if you aren’t a “mover” you’re probably a “shaker”. Did you know our amazing voices can go beyond just the microphone? Yes, we have video! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here!
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Wade’s Links:
• LinkedIn | @wadeswikle
• Website | https://2collegebrothers.com/
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GOLD NUGGETS:
(02:22) - College Athlete to Franchise Owner
(09:53) - Franchise Expansion and Mindset Shift
(19:05) - The Growing Moving Industry & Network Building
(28:18) - Productive Fun Retreat For Moving Company Owners
(34:04) - Partnerships and Improving the Moving Industry
(41:41) - Growing a Moving Company
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Books Mentioned:
• No BS Direct Marketing | Dan Kennedy
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Previous guests on The Small Business Safari include Amy Lyle, Ben Alexander, Joseph Sission, Jonathan Ellis, Brad Dell, Chris Hanks, C.T. Emerson, Chad Brown, Tracy Moore, Wayne Sherger, David Raymond, Paul Redman, Gabby Meteor, Ryan Dement, Barbara Heil Sonneck, Bryan John, Tom Defore, Rusty Clifton, Duane Johns, Beth Miller, Jason Sleeman, Andy Suggs, Chris Michel, Jon Ostenson, Tommy Breedlove, Rocky Lalvani, Amanda Griffey, Spencer Powell, Joe Perrone, David Lupberger, Duane C. Barney, Dave Moerman, Jim Ryerson, Al Mishkoff, Scott Specker, Mike Claudio and more!
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If You Loved This Episode Try These!
• How Seasonal Businesses Can Propel You up to the Mountain Top | Matthew Efird
• Essential Tips for Recruiting in Home Services Businesses | Tina McKenna
• If It’s 4th and 1 Against the IRS, Make Sure You Have Your CPA and Payroll Team Onboard! | Charles Read
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Have any questions or comments? Connect with me here!
We went out there and that basically turned into a glorified bachelor party. You know, we went around the circle one time, introduced ourselves and then somebody suggested we take shots at launch and, uh, you know, we didn't really get any productive work done.
Speaker 2:Don't get me, I'll talk big daddy's going to that one. Yeah, you know what I'm going to act.
Speaker 1:I'm going to trust it. It was a ton of moving storage solutions.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the small business safari where I hope guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountain top up success. It's a jungle out there and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in adventure team and let's take a ride through the safari and get you to the mountain top. You like that delay that I just read for fear of like and record.
Speaker 1:No, we're back.
Speaker 2:Everybody. Small business safari, let's put it into action. Let's get something going in your business. Let's get something going. If you haven't started your business, let's get this going. It's all about getting things going.
Speaker 2:But before we do that, alan, last time we got together I got a little surprise. Right after we get done with the podcast, I got a text message saying hey, chris, we're going to get started. And with the podcast I got a text message saying hey, chris, what are you up to tomorrow night. And I responded the morning because I said well, you know, it was a vendor of mine. He does all my paper click and I figured I'll just wait in the morning. So I texted in the morning.
Speaker 2:He goes do you want to go to the Eagles concert here in Atlanta? I'm like rock and roll big dog, let's go do it. 75 and 76 years old They've been doing the Eagles for 51 years. Man, that's unbelievable. It was super cool. So I had a blast, got to do that Thursday night.
Speaker 2:And were they still bringing it? Were they tight? I thought they were tight. Yeah, somebody said come on, man, tell me. You can't tell me they have the heat. I said, all right, not the heat necessarily. Here the cool thing was we had really good seats but we got to sit through the entire concert because everybody was my age or older and nobody was standing. But man, I thought the Eagles got great sound great tight. Henley on the drums is tough. Walsh still can bring it with his solos. I thought was pretty good too. And then Deacon Fry is one Fry's son. He was there. And then the surprise for me is everything is I'm not a country guy, but Vince Gill. I had heard had been with him for quite a while and seeing him in person very talented.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I went to a Kansas concert a long time ago and they were way past their prime and they couldn't hit the high notes. They couldn't. It was horrible. It's like sometimes you need to hang it up, but it's cool that they could do it. I mean, it's like the stones. I mean the stones are putting out new stuff, All right, that's great.
Speaker 2:So you got to keep grinding, make it happen. One day you can be the stones, maybe after 51 years you can be the Eagles, or maybe after just 11 years you could have your own college moving college brothers moving franchise. And that's who we've got on, Wade, Welcome to the show. We're excited.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 2:So let's get into Wade and what he's done, because he's got I know he's got five companies. We got a lot to cover. But let's go back to the beginning. You're in college and you're in Florida, so you're a Gator. I am Okay. We'll still talk to you, okay.
Speaker 1:So that a boy All right.
Speaker 2:So you're in college and obviously you were just bored with schoolwork and said you know what? I'm going to start my own business. So how did you come up with this idea? How the hell did you find the time to do it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no. So basically this story goes I played baseball in a smaller school in North Carolina my freshman year and I came home from the summer and I was playing on transfer and basically it was time to hang up the cleats. Just like you were saying about the Eagles. You know, you reach a point where you know your your talent's out of the way, your desires so, or maybe the other way around. But I I was looking for a summer job and this was like kind of right in the middle of the recession, 2008, 2009 era and I couldn't really find anybody that would hire a college student for three months to work part time with no experience. That was just going to leave them high and dry during the slow season.
Speaker 1:In my hometown, which is Venice, florida, they kind of board up shop in the summertime. Down there it's kind of a retirement village and they, they, their season is in the winter. So I'm there in the summer looking for work and I, my dad's like you need to work, you got to pay for your own bills. Now You're a grown man, get to work. So I started posting ads on Craigslist. Just you know, young college athlete looking for any kind of general labor. I didn't really want to sit in an office or, you know, be inside. I like being outside, being active. So started to get a lot of calls to load and unload you whole trucks and kind of just work for myself that summer. You know, I would set my own schedule, set my own rates. I'd get paid in cash. Usually I'd get fed by these customers that were trying to save some money during every session to just do it themselves. You know, I was charging like my first job ever. I think I charged $10 an hour and then I upped at the 12 and then eventually to 15. And then I came transferred to Gainesville where I attended the University of Florida and throughout my time there I basically was doing the same thing. You know, I worked some more traditional jobs up there but I was always kind of doing this little side hustle of moving.
Speaker 1:And when I graduated with my undergrad degree I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I actually went to school for telecommunications and broadcast journalism and I realized I didn't really want to pursue that field. I had a teacher that said you know, if you want to go make $19,000 a year and work 14 hour days in the middle of nowhere, then this is a great place to be, which is how a lot of journalists get their start. So you know, it's kind of like professional sports in that field. You got to really you got to grind and just kind of do grunt work until you can make it to the big show. So you know, I didn't really want to go down that road again and I decided to do it. Any college student would do that doesn't really know what they want to do.
Speaker 1:And I applied to grad school. So I was fortunate enough to get into a program with the business school at University of Florida in entrepreneurship, with a focus on entrepreneurship, because I, you know, had kind of had my own little businesses here and there. You know the moving thing, even though it wasn't really a legit business, I was still kind of my own thing. And when I applied to that program, part of the thesis behind the program was to start a business. You know that was the objective. They wanted everybody to actually start a real business and get real world experience. And so I, you know, moving was kind of what I knew. I was already kind of doing it on my own and decided to pursue it professionally and get a license and people liked the idea of hiring a college student.
Speaker 1:So I started my moving company at the age of 21, back in 2012, and two college brothers had actually been around since 2010. It was started by two other college students and they had built a cool brand. They had a lot going for them and they were actually a company that I aspired to be like and looked up to a lot. I kept one of their flyers on my desk as motivation, even though they were my competitor. And after a couple summers of running my original company, which was called Smarter Moving Solutions, one of the brothers reached out to me and said hey, we want to go pursue some other ventures. You know we're graduating and we want to go do other stuff. Would you be interested in acquiring our company? And we reached a deal and kind of. The rest was history.
Speaker 1:I took over two college brothers. I tried to run the brand side by side. I thought maybe two college brothers would be like the college student moving model and my company, smarter Moving Solutions, would be like residential and commercial. But I didn't really have the brand power. I didn't have the customer base that they had and ultimately decided to just consolidate it all into that two college brothers brand and I figured out you know that we couldn't really have a sustainable business just moving college students or just hiring college students, so decided to kind of you know make that more of the story and you know the humble beginnings and really start to go after more residential commercial stuff.
Speaker 1:And I knew I wanted to franchise a business One day. I felt like this would be a franchisable brand and model, and so the next step with that was to open a second location and prove the model in a different market. So we chose Tampa. I had some friends down in Tampa, we had some relationships. You know a lot of kids that go to the University of Florida or from the Tampa area. It's only about two hours away. So we opened up in Tampa in 2015 and just started really getting after franchising within this last year and just sold our first franchise. We've got a second one that we're hoping to close on in the next couple of weeks this year and we are exploring that whole new model.
Speaker 3:That's a completely different dynamic. Being a franchisor. Yeah, exactly, Totally different Are the franchises are they in Florida, or did you sell?
Speaker 1:your first one in Idaho, no our first one was actually the Gainesville location we found. So I hosted a podcast called the Grow your Moving Company podcast and I've got another little side project called Moving Titan Retreats, which is a basically a conference event planning company for the moving industry. And so my first franchise partner started listening to the podcast, ended up coming to one of our retreats. You know, immediately identified like. This is the guy I'd love to do business with. He had owned another moving company with a partner up in South Carolina and just wasn't seeing eye to eye with how his partner was running things and called me and was interested in starting a moving company in Florida and we worked that a deal to basically sell that existing location to him. The next franchise that we're hoping to close on within the next few weeks is actually in San Antonio, texas.
Speaker 3:So yeah, montana.
Speaker 1:I'm Montana, not Idaho. No, no, it's a single flight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, we gotta go back. You actually brought up something early on in the process that I've heard in a painting scenario before. That is you had that college brothers moving and you thought SMS I caught the initials there, by the way, check that out. Yeah, smarter moving solutions Was gonna be that residential commercial brand for kind of the adults, right, quote-unquote. And I heard that with college pro painters back in the day that they had college pro painters. But there was also Another level that they said, hey, we're gonna have this, this will be more of the adult brand. And it never really worked out for them as they tried to Segment it and go for it because they found that, just having one single brand, nobody really was too worried about who was paying their house. They just want to make sure the house is painted correctly, and so they found that said, is that what you found, or was it just a man? I just can't keep these both things running.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's a little bit of a combination of the two. So I Tried to, you know, kind of run the two brands. But in order to do that we had to run two separate websites, two different trucks, two different sets of uniforms and you know it was just. It didn't make any sense. It would have been way too expensive to try to jungle the both of those and have basically have two competing marketing strategies against one another. So so that was part of the reason and and smarter moving solutions.
Speaker 1:It just wasn't as like sticky of a name. You know I had been around less amount of time and so we weren't getting the organic business that you know People had seen from the truck driving around for several years before Before I came onto the scene. So you know that that was kind of the main thing that I found and realized that it makes a lot more sense to just put all my focus and efforts. You know I didn't have a lot of resources back then. We had bootstrapped everything I had, you know $600 in a pickup truck when I started. So you know it's not like I had, you know, all this money to play with, to run two sets of two different, completely different brands that were ultimately All right.
Speaker 2:So when's the last time you actually moved something?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I really haven't been on the trucks. We've dug into systems and processes really heavily over the last several years. Yeah, probably the last time I I actually moved something was a TV that I moved from my living room to my bedroom last night.
Speaker 2:There you go. You'd pay yourself either, did you?
Speaker 1:know I didn't. We've got we've got about 35 employees out of our Tampa office and I think we've got 20 or 25 out of the Gainesville office right now and we've got a really good team. You know instruction. We've got a general manager, we've got an HR person, we've got a CFO Sales manager I think we have five sales people now a customer service manager, marketing person and then An operations manager and then all of our movers and drivers. So we've got a great team that Carries out most of the day-to-day stuff. You know, I still come to the office pretty much every day I'm in town. I do travel a lot now with the other business ventures that I have going on and trying to sell franchises, but but yeah, no, they do a great job and we've really been trying to hone in on all the systems and processes so that we can bundle up everything and Make sure that our franchisee setup for success. You know I made all the mistakes early on so that a prospective franchisee doesn't have to yeah, I'm still making them 15 years in.
Speaker 2:So and yesterday, yeah, just as early as Monday, I was picking pain off of shoe molding, but that's the first time I'd been in the field and I was trying to remember. In the last time I had actually had to go out and do this. But that was a long story. Your CRM system when you first started, what did you start with and where did you morph to? And where are you today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, when we first started it was, it was like an Apple calendar. What are Google sheets? We really didn't have a CRM system, probably until probably around 2018, maybe 2017. We got a moving industry specific CRM called move it pro. We ultimately ended up switching over to another one called smart moving, which is what we currently use today, specifically designed for the moving industry, and it's made a huge difference. I don't know. I still see companies now and then that don't use a CRM and it blows my mind that that you can run a business in 2023 without one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have no idea how that could happen. Right now I'm on one, and we've been talking to some others as well About switching CRMs and I just I loathe having to do it again, but I do feel like, as the industry is moving, you got to have it to be competitive and to provide that great customer service and touch Points that that everybody's expecting now in today's world. You know the text messages, the automatic Ability to set up estimates, the automatic ability to set up time with you for your company to work with. You gotta be easy to work with. So I think the CRM is huge. So, yeah, really is. So let's talk about you got the business, you got the process of the system. That's why I was interested in CRM. Alan hit on this. I want to get back to that. Now is the franchising stuff? So you've got one franchisee. What is the mindset shift you're gonna go from, from operator to franchise or yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's actually something I'm kind of excited about Because, you know, in moving you're you're dealing with the customers every day. You're dealing with the movers every day. You know with with a franchisee, you're dealing with a business owner every day. So you know when, like the clients in our industry you know are great but they're in a stressful time in their life, and then you have, you know, a blue collar workforce that you have to, you know, be able to relate to.
Speaker 1:So, in order to run a successful moving company franchise, you, you really need to be a people person. You know our inventories are people, so to speak. We don't have something on a shelf that we're selling to people. We have people that we're selling to people and and you have to be able to have empathy and be able to relate with a client who's going through a life transition and you know, what we get to do is make that life transition better and we get to create careers for People that are that are starting off in the workforce a lot of the time.
Speaker 1:You know, usually our movers are in their 20s and we try to craft a career path for them To hopefully be able to own their own franchise one day, or if they don't want to own their own business, then then we provide tracks and sales or management or potentially franchise development and getting involved with the franchise side of the business. But I think shifting the mindset is kind of just thinking, you know, from a local base, how can I, how can I be a pillar of my community? To a national base, how can I reach, build this network of Entrepreneurs that are affiliated with my brand and coach them and help them through all the things that I've learned over the last 11 years Running a moving business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm back. Sorry, I was coughing so I had myself a mute. I thought you were gonna mute and flip me off again. I should, I should be, but no, I gotta go back to this. So I I think that that you went. You're going from B to C to B to B in coaching. I think that's a big mind shift, mindset shift you've got to go through and you know Ellen's been in and out of the franchising world and I just wanted, I mean, what do you think about that?
Speaker 3:Well, it's gonna be a massive shift because it sounds like your first franchise is somebody that you knew right, and it's Well, I just met this year yeah, I didn't know prior.
Speaker 1:It was somebody that found found me through the podcast and the retreats and stuff like that. So yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 3:It's going from being able to Lord over all you survey and tell people what to do. And if you don't want to do it this way, then we'll find somebody else to selling a franchise. And those people may have more business experience than you and you can't specifically tell them what to do because it's their business and you know you've got all the federal regulations kind of preventing you from from being too heavy handed in the franchise situation. So you kind of have to very carefully design that box that they can play in and then if they try to climb out of the box which they will always do then you got to bat them back in, but you got to do it in a way that kind of goes by. You know the rules. Yeah it's, it's a completely different animal. Yeah, I think. I think you're gonna be doing it out of state.
Speaker 2:And you're gonna be doing yeah, I think that's listening to you over the years on the podcast and knowing you long as I have I. I think it's gonna be a fun arc for Wade to go through. Oh yeah, and an interesting journey, and I think that's one where a lot of people listen to. This, you know take one way to scale is to franchise your idea. It is right, it definitely great idea. We've had a number of guys on time.
Speaker 2:Scaling with other people's money. Still hard, yeah, still hard to do it, man, and you got to change your mindset because and Wade said this and I picked this up on one of the clip you know the team that gets you from zero to one million, the team that gets you from one to three and the team that gets you from three to six million may not always be the same team. And I think a big change for you in this is it going into franchising, changing your mindset more you focus your time and effort.
Speaker 3:It'll be exciting to see what kind of ideas come out of the field. And, of course, everybody's gonna buy the franchise and they're gonna give you their ideas before they've even opened. And and you know you're gonna sell a franchise to somebody with a marketing background and they're gonna be challenging you and marketing. You know you'll sell to somebody who's got an operations background and they're gonna be challenging there. It's gonna be wild. It'll be a lot of fun though. Yeah, man Kudos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think I think, you know, being as involved in the moving industry as I am and interacting with entrepreneurs and other moving company owners through the retreats, through the podcasts, has primed me to be able to have that relationship. You know, I want, I want somebody with an entrepreneurial mindset and essentially this is going to be somebody who's going to be my business partner. You know, it's not like I'm no longer going to be their boss. They're going to be somebody that is representing the brand that I've been building over the last 11 years and that's really been getting built for 13 years now, if you count the original owners. And so you know it's going to be something that we're going to have to, you know, collaborate on.
Speaker 1:So far my franchisee up in Gainesville has brought a ton of great ideas to the table and that's that's.
Speaker 1:That's a really inspiring environment for me down here in Tampa to hear those ideas and to mastermind with them. You know, I ultimately want to do what I'm doing with the time retreats, with my own organization, you know, with a bunch of moving owners who are working under the same brand, the same process, same, a lot of the same marketing strategies, but also bringing new processes, bringing new marketing strategies to the forefront. You know, as far as, like you know their marketing efforts, you know it's their money if they want to buy TV radio. You know stuff that we've found that maybe didn't work well for us but they can figure out a way to make it work. Maybe there's something that we can take from that and apply to our core business and then to other people in our network. So you know, I'm really excited about that and that collaboration effort to where we all are independent owners of our own organizations but at the same time we're all working together to create a large network of you know, a brand that we can leverage together.
Speaker 2:In the moving industry. Is it fragmented more? I mean? I seem to know I was, before we get on, I was thinking about the different moving franchises I know or I thought I knew of. Is it more fragmented than it is consolidated?
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. I mean there's a couple national brand franchises out there right now. I, you know I wouldn't say there is a dominant player who is like a go-to person that everybody wants to. There's not necessarily like a McDonald's of franchising. There's some pretty big. There's a couple big brands. There's the Van Lines, which have been around for over 100 years. They're kind of dinosaurs and we all know what happened to the dinosaurs. So you know we'll see if they can kind of pivot their model. We get a lot of customers that had bad experiences with the Van Lines, that want to work with a locally owned independent operation that does things differently as we do as an independent mover. And then there's some national companies that have that are just now, really within the last few years, starting to consolidate a little bit with private equity. You know I'm not going to name names, but there's there is more interest in the private equity space and moving companies. So I see it rolling up a little bit more in the coming years.
Speaker 1:I just got back from the Home Service Freedom Conference with Tommy Mabella. We talked a little bit before we recorded and you know there were three other moving company owners there that at least I was able to identify and I'm pretty well networked, so I already had an idea two of them that were going to be there they're good friends of mine. And then one guy actually wasn't even an owner. He worked for somebody else that you know followed Tommy and decided to go on his own. But but you know, we talked to a ton of HVAC companies, a ton of restoration, a bunch of plumbers, a lot of pest control.
Speaker 1:You know all these other industries were strongly represented at this, this Home Service Conference, and, and barely you know, probably less than 1% moving company owners. I think there was like 700 people there and there was four of us. So yeah, I mean there's still a ton of growth to have and most of the companies that I talked to, you know it's relatively rare for a moving company to get into the eight figure arena. At this conference there must have been over 50 HVAC companies alone that were doing eight figures, probably more than that. I mean there's these other industries that are a lot of them doing nine figures, including Tommy with the garage door industry. So you know, I see a ton of potential and there's no reason why moving can't do what these other industries have done. I think it's just a matter of systematizing what we do and and and just consolidating and leveraging a brand in a way that that's still kind of being explored. I think it's the Wild West still a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a good point. Yeah, Tommy Mellow does a great job. Love his podcast. Hope Service. Millionaire Got his books actually shared my book with him and did you give him?
Speaker 2:autograph. I did autograph it. So the two of them we got on the phone, talked about kicking around for a little bit. But yeah, I think you hit on HVAC kind of that shining star in home services of what consolidation could look like and what super growth looks like. But going back to it again, you got to be a good process driven and systematized company to get that kind of growth or else you lose that customer service feel and focus.
Speaker 3:And then, somewhere along the way, you spun off a couple of other companies. So now you're just popping companies out right and left. Is that? I mean, were they all spin offs of this business?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I mean really, it's building an ecosystem similar to what Tommy's been doing in the home service space, you know, from a from a general home service standpoint. The podcast started because I, you know, I didn't know what I was doing. I was trying to figure out this, this moving industry. There was no conferences, there were no podcasts, there were no books written by really moving company owners, like everybody was keeping their cards really close to their chest, you know, traditionally. And then we saw this new wave of moving company owners that sprung up in the last recession between 2008, 2012. We saw some huge fan line companies, grable being probably the biggest, go out of business.
Speaker 1:In the last recession I filed for bankruptcy and so, you know, I was just looking for answers because I, you know, I read all the audio books that you're supposed to read. I, you know, read actual books. I went to other conferences. I talked to business owner friends of mine that were in different industries, from health and fitness to to, like, automotive sales and like none of the principles really directly applied to moving, and gave me that blueprint. So I started picking up the phone and calling other moving company owners that looked like they were successful from their online presence in other markets and just seeing if they'd talked to me and most of them did and I was like man, these conversations are gold I can finally ask like the nuanced questions about my industry, like we got to like record this. So that led to the greater moving company podcast ultimately, and it was a learning tool for me at first and it's still this, to be completely honest, you know, I still learn from pretty much every guest that comes on and I ask questions I'm generally interested in and what they're finding that works in their business and I'd like to share you know, a lot of what works for my business too and just have that mentality of abundance.
Speaker 1:And so that that eventually led to the moving time and retreat where I made all these connections with moving company owners and we're like, well, we got to get together, let's bring everybody together, started off running the biggest Airbnb we could find and we brought like 18 moving company owners in. And then you know this last event, we had 58 and now we're shooting. We're planning an event in March that we have room for 800 people and we're trying to make it a full scale conference that that really doesn't exist in our industry. There's one coach that came out into the scene that's kind of dominating the consulting space and you know it's just he puts on conferences, but it's just him talking. The beauty of the moving time and retreat is that we have multiple perspectives. We have multiple speakers that come in. We network, we mastermind with each other, we work out together, we bond with each other so that we can, you know, have a moving company in every corner of the country, in case we ever find ourselves in that area and need some help with something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love how you're going industry vertical on that in this Titan retreat. What does somebody get out of this? I mean, what makes your retreat different from the other conferences? You and I talked before we got on. Getting to a couple conferences a year is always good for the soul, good for the entrepreneur, good for the owner, helps raise your level, raise your mindset. In fact, I even saw one of your posts where you said working out before the conference. I'm like come on, dog. If I was at that conference I would have been working out with him, but anyway. So what's?
Speaker 3:the easy for you to say but you can't. You can't do that after you've been on a, on a heater, on the blackjack tank.
Speaker 2:Well, that's true, yeah, but I had to get my money back and so I did that, but they weren't in Vegas this time.
Speaker 3:And you can't work out when you've your gouts flaring up. Yeah, that's got like got like all right.
Speaker 2:So the movie tight retreat give us a flavor of kind of what you guys do. Is it breaking out, bringing in speakers outside the biz? What do you do?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'm a big believer in who you spend your time with is who you ultimately become, and you know it's lonely at the top a lot of the times. You know, especially as a moving company owner, you know it can be. It can be tough. You don't really have. You know you might not want to talk to your competition. I mean, I support talking to your competition. Sometimes they can be your best referral partners but some people don't realize that early on and so you know it's a way to bring people together to get that mentorship.
Speaker 1:The first like iteration of this retreat it was somebody else actually, who, who actually had a Airbnb property that they owned and I met him through the podcast and through some Facebook groups that I'm a member of and he invited out like eight or nine moving company owners to stay at his Airbnb house in Denver and it was just all business like.
Speaker 1:We came all prepared with two hour presentations on our companies and we sat in a room and ordered food, food take out in, and just sat there and just presented our companies and then picked each thing apart and I got a ton, a ton of value out of it. But it was exhausting and, like you know, by the time we got through all the, all the presentations, we grabbed dinner and went to bed. The next iteration of this was another guy who has a company out West and kind of you know, rented an Airbnb and got some, got some moving company owners together and we went out there and that basically turned into a glorified bachelor party. You know, we went around the circle one time, introduced ourselves and then somebody suggested we take shots at lunch and you know we didn't really get any productive work done.
Speaker 2:Big daddy's going to that one. You know what I'm going to act like it was moving storage solutions. Yeah, what? Why let's start.
Speaker 1:We talked moving the whole time over some social lubricants, but but you know it wasn't as productive as it should have been, probably. So that's, you know, really really all right. Well, let's like, let's do both of these things, like let's, let's work all day and then do something fun and epic, and in the evenings so. So we try to mix business with pleasure and what I've found is that that's making better bonds. Like at the retreat we're all working out together. In the morning, we're sitting through the conference during the day, where we have speakers come in, we have really successful entrepreneurs who come and speak to us, successful moving company owners. We had a guy that owns one of the largest companies in the US come and he was generous to give a presentation to us. And then after that we usually break around four or five o'clock and we provide all the meals, typically. You know, I don't know if we're going to do that going forward, but that's, that's what we've done in the past and then so we break bread together and then we go do something fun. We'll have a party, will go run a giant boat and cruise around. Will, you know, run ATVs, like whatever it is Like? We'll do something really cool that everybody just talks about and so it's a vacation.
Speaker 1:But it's also a really valuable learning experience where you know we have conversations, group texts I mean too many of them right now, but we've got we're always. There's always somebody talking about. You know what's working, what's not, what they're having trouble with, what they can need help with. If you know if they're selling something, you know whether it's like an old moving truck or they find a good opportunity where they somebody else is selling, like storage vaults or whatever it is. You know a new vendor that we stumble with. You know weighing pros and cons, the different, different things. If we have a truck breakdown in Tennessee, we know and call my guy in Nashville and he'll have a couple guys out there within two hours to help transfer the stuff on to his truck, and so the customer gets their items delivered.
Speaker 1:So you know there's so many different benefits with it and you know, I think it's ultimately just surrounding ourselves with highly ambitious people that are going through the exact same struggle that we're going through and motivating each other, pushing each other and ultimately helping each other succeed at the end of the day. I mean it's fun to come back year over year with the same group and compare numbers with each other. We always want to be, you know, we always want to show growth. We always want to, you know, see, not not be the weakest link in the room, and that's, I think, a healthy competition that drives all of us and, at the same time, help. We want to help each other.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good, good, benchmarking is is awesome. But there's that side of me and maybe it was my old corporate days where you know you just want to destroy your competition and I don't know, do you, do you have sort of market protection with within this group? Or are there people in the room that are supposedly sharing information with people that they're directly going up against?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's, it's open. I mean, it's a mentality of abundance, like, ultimately, we're trying to lift up the whole industry. The moving industry just has a bad rap overall from 100 years of people being mistreated and not running businesses. The best way and so really like what we're doing with this whole ecosystem is is we're raising the standard so that customers can more clearly identify who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, which will ultimately allow us to charge higher rates and and higher profit margins and and draw more people into this field as a career that are more skilled and more talented, by not having a stigma attached to it.
Speaker 1:So I don't think there's, you know, such a thing as, like you know, keep your cards close to your chest. This is strictly confident and I mean maybe certain things, but there's not a lot of secrets in our business. You know it's. It's it's more so like we want to change the public perception together and, if we can, you know it's really only the good guys that are going to pay the money to come to something like this. You're not going to have the fly by night scammers coming to these things because they're just going to keep them in the same way. They don't need to. They don't need to develop their businesses.
Speaker 1:So if we can band together with the good guys, even if they're competitors I mean, we've had multiple Tampa Bay people come to our retreats and you know I don't have a problem with that at all and sometimes when we book up, we can pass them business. When they book up, they can pass us business. If there's a guy across town that's doing something shady, we can talk crap about them together and make, make our souls feel better. But you know, support each other. At the end of the day, there's enough to go around. And if you're doing things the right way and focused on yourself and looking to just help others, then I believe that ultimately it's going to, it's going to come back around and help you.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of a story. We did a kitchen remodel for a customer and she said do you have a moving referral? And I said I absolutely do. I have a local guy here in Atlanta who who runs a really good, sharp moving outfit. He came out, one of his guys gave a quote and she ended up going with the cheaper option, which was how? That by night group.
Speaker 2:So I came back to do the final inspection with my project manager at the kitchen and the move was in and she was sitting there and she's like Chris, I should have gone with your guy said what happened. She said I'm going to show you. I'm like, okay, sure enough, they hit two toilets and didn't flush him. Number twos in both toilets. I'm like, oh, do you what? And then she showed me the six pack of beer that they stashed behind her garbage can. Didn't even put it in the garbage can when they were done, moving her in there. And then she showed me the boxes that were left and they were half opened like they were rummaging through them. Oh, oh, my gosh. She said I've never felt more horrified and scared in my life and I was like, yeah, she goes. I should have listened to you I'm like, yeah, yeah, so anyway, let's go look at your bathroom.
Speaker 2:So you're listening to me now, which way for? But yeah, amazing, right, because those horror stories exist. People like, hey, man, I just saved 10 bucks, or you know, I saved 1000 bucks, good for you. But look what just happened your toilets got decimated. You can I mean completely decimated. The beer cans, I mean. That was just a classic, you, bro, I know it's horrible. So obviously, moving industry needs a better rap. And you're doing it, man. You're bringing it together with the podcast, that retreats, making it happen, getting people party or franchise college brothers, not just one to college brothers.
Speaker 3:Who's better than one? Chris right, always better than that.
Speaker 2:I love it. So now you're changing your mindset, moving that way. You got that going. Did you ever take on a partner in the two college brothers, or has always been you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so back in 2015, I actually did I had some fraternity brothers that started. They pulled together and started a little investment group and they approached me and wanted to buy into the company. And we were pretty small back then and I needed some money. I needed some cash. So it did help us a little bit, especially opening up our Tampa office, because I had bootstrapped everything up to that point and I felt like I could go down and bootstrap a second location, and so I did take on a group of let's see, I guess it was four or three other people, I guess four other people that had formed a little investment group. I actually ended up buying them out, actually earlier this year, right before we sold our first franchise. A few months prior to that, I saw the direction that everything was going and I paid a lot more to get them out that they paid to get in. So they got a nice little return. But they were still friends of mine. We left on good terms. I was just talking actually in a group text with them last night about just random sports things and it was a good partnership. I think it was good for them that they got a nice return on their investment over the course of several years and I learned some valuable lessons not to undervalue yourself too early on. Try to find another way here, or at least negotiate a little bit better.
Speaker 1:I think I was just a little bit blinded by the fact that all of my immediate financial concerns could disappear if I took on some silent partners and they were good I mean, they didn't try to jerk me around or anything at all but I still had that feeling that it just wasn't all mine, like there's still that gut thing where I had to run things by them if I wanted to buy something over $5,000. And then I had to justify it and I had to make big decisions and at least loop them in. Ultimately I held the majority share and I could make the decision. But part of the reason was they were friends and so I wanted to. I had a lot of respect for them Not that you shouldn't have respect for a business partner, but not for them. But I wanted to maintain that personal relationship. And the other part is we were legally obligated to work together and disclose everything, and so I didn't like having to explain my justification. Starting some of these other projects I could kind of tell they're like what's waiting to do now? Like he's got so many ideas and they didn't really get the bigger picture that I ultimately had and I just wanted it to be under my control. So I'm careful about who I choose to do business with.
Speaker 1:Now. I still do believe that I'd rather have a bite of a watermelon than a whole grape. So I do have in some of my other businesses I do have partners, but it wasn't they're strategic partners, so like they're active partners versus just passive partners that were my friends that approached me with some money. Like these. My other partners are like in the moving time retreats. It's another moving company owner who helps to push the brand and with our time up, we have another spin-off that I haven't even talked about yet, but it's called Tighten Up Training, which we're launching an online training program and I've teamed up with a few other moving company owners, and so having those strategic partners that are actually active and they can bring something to the table is it all takes a lot of pressure off of just me. So I do believe in partnerships, but when it comes to my livelihood and my bread and butter, what pays the bills? I like to have full control over that, and that's two college brothers right now.
Speaker 2:So, dude, he did it. He's paying the cost to be the boss. Right, Paid out, got him out of there and said hey, man, I'm gonna be the boss. Man, I like that because I like to make those decisions. All right, man, we are coming to the end of our time together. I really enjoyed this. You mentioned Tighten Up Training. We'll get that in there. So I assume that that's focused on the moving industry and people can buy that and subscribe to that training service or modules.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, that's a part of the moving ecosystem with the podcast and the retreats. Basically, we're working with a guy named Andy Elliott. He's a big sales trainer actually out in Tommy Mel's neck of the woods. He's gonna be doing a lot of sales training videos. We're hosting it on Lightspeed, which is the Bradley platform if you're familiar with that at all and we're gonna be also doing a lot of moving specific videos so that people can onboard their movers. They'll be able.
Speaker 1:We're basically gonna be creating an entire SOP manual with videos and tests and quizzes, and it gamifies the whole process. So you get points when you watch a video and you can see how you stack up against other people in your company or other people that are subscribing in different companies. So really excited about that and it's gonna benefit our own companies too. It's gonna allow us to leverage several different minds from other companies and we raised a little bit of capital for that too, so that we can really have a Hollywood level production style, which our industry doesn't have at all. I mean, there's a couple of videos out there, if you Google it on the internet, that look like they were shot on like a 1994 JVC camcorder. So it's rough and our industry desperately needs more training, more guidance and just more of a polished approach that we can then translate to our local clientele and ultimately again lift up the entire perception of the industry and get rid of the stigma.
Speaker 2:Solid man. We'll get all that stuff in the show notes so obviously we can hit you up on your podcast. Grow your Moving Company. Moving Titan Retreats, of course, to college brothers Moving. If you want to get into your own franchise, get in early. I do know a buddy of mine who got in early on another franchise in the moving world and he totally loved the fact that he was there early to help shape the direction and loves being part of that now, so Sits at the big boy table. He gets to sit at the big boy table. So go ahead to chance. That's a great point.
Speaker 1:With the early people adopters. I'm being very selective about the first 10 or 20, however many franchises we bring on. But it is, it's a round table. We have a call tomorrow with our existing franchisee and a couple of members of my leadership team that I'm gonna be offering some equity in the franchise or business to help grow and scale that and offer the support and the consent and system creation for that whole entity. So yeah, I mean the early. There's definitely some benefits. You know our costs or royalties are very low right now, willing to negotiate to get the right people in place to really scale this thing nationwide. So you're absolutely right about the ground floor opportunity there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, go take advantage of it. All right, Wade, we've enjoyed our time together, but we've got to ask our famous four questions. All right, what is a book you would recommend to the audience?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so anything by Dan Kennedy there's. I would start with the no BS Guide Direct Response Marketing for Non-Direct Response Marketing Businesses Love that book, but really I really like everything that Dan Kennedy has produced. He's got a whole series of no BS books. I've actually got one of his books on my desk right now the Ultimate Sales Ladder. I haven't read this one yet, but I'm about to start and you know his stuff is just like the name no BS. It's very direct.
Speaker 2:Love that man. That's a great one. I have not heard that. I know it. Good, I put it on my list. Right after I get done listening to my Elon Musk book, I'm doing that in audible.
Speaker 3:Yeah, one and one and a half speed again, ooh yeah, we're moving fast.
Speaker 2:At least I can keep up with him. He was just a physics guy, he wasn't a theoretical physics guy. All right, number two, what's the favorite feature of your home?
Speaker 1:Of my home I can keep my boat. I live in a Marina neighborhood so I keep my boat in the Marina in my neighborhood so I can access it anytime.
Speaker 2:Winner. All right, what kind of boat?
Speaker 1:It is a, sorry, it's a 2602. Nautic Star Legacy Nice yeah, 26 foot center console. Yeah, beauty 22.
Speaker 2:Ah-ha, more power, baby we're. Oh, do some fishing, all right, what the customer service pet peeve of yours when you're out and you're the customer when I'm the customer.
Speaker 1:Ooh, I would say that's a good one. Man, you guys cut me off guard here. I would say somebody assuming that I want to pay less for something?
Speaker 3:That's interesting. That's a good one. I like that.
Speaker 1:Like somebody like giving me the lower package maybe because of my age or something like that but like not giving me the premium product option.
Speaker 2:That's a great point. Don't write that. We say this at my company all the time Don't write the customer. Don't write the check you would write. Let the customer write the check they want to write and don't try to prejudge that somebody wants to do it. You got to do it. I think that's a great one and that's also just an awesome sales point. Don't undersell yourself and do not undercut who you think your customer is. That's a great one. Love that. Love that. Love that. All right, we want a DIY nightmare story. Actually, in your business.
Speaker 3:I want to hear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did you like drop a refrigerator from the second floor and like take out a kitten? I?
Speaker 3:mean whoop. It went through the floor and smashed the kitten on the first floor.
Speaker 2:I kind of believe there's going to be some great moving stories. You're like shit.
Speaker 1:Well, I didn't smash a kitten, but I do have a cat story. Probably I don't know how many years ago five or six years ago we got a call and I was, for the most part, off the trucks at this point. I wasn't really doing a lot of moves unless it was an emergency. But we got a call from somebody who was a cancer patient and they were like I have to move closer to my doctor. I'm living on the second floor. Or actually it wasn't the person, it was her sister who called us. She's like yeah, she has to move closer to her doctor. She's living on a second floor. Would you guys be able to help her out? She really doesn't have any money. And I was like, yeah, yeah, we'll help her out. For sure, I'd like to be out on that job. So go out to the job. I'm actually doing the move.
Speaker 1:I haven't really done a lot of moves for a while at this point, so I'm a little rusty, probably, but I wanted to be the person doing it. And so we wrap up the load and I see her carrying her cat down the stairs and she's struggling. She's kind of frail and I felt really bad. So I go running over to her after we had loaded up the truck with all the furniture and I try to attempt to help her transition the cat and the cat leaps out of my arms and just bolts off into the woods and I go to run it down and chase it and I'm like, oh yeah, I can't catch a cat. And she just starts crying and I was like, oh my gosh. And the sister came over and she was like, listen, that was a straight cat that she had brought in and she does not need to be dealing with animals right now. Like that cat wanted to go find its home.
Speaker 1:And I felt horrible about this situation and hopefully it came back. They left, I'm sure. I think they left some food out for it or something. I never really did hear if it came back or not, but that was the worst story.
Speaker 2:That's good one. Two college brothers we'll move your cat, whether you want us to or not. No, that's good.
Speaker 1:Hey man, thank you for sharing that one. No good eat goes on promise.
Speaker 2:You don't write exactly right. We always talk about nothing but positive stuff on this show. It's no, we don't really.
Speaker 3:But today we did Wait a minute.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, just this episode. Wade man, you're awesome. I love what you're doing with the moving industry. Get out there. If you're still listening to us, which you are, go out there and keep going. If you're in thinking about even getting into the moving industry, even if you're not man, go check this cat out, because he knows what he's talking about, like how I threw that cat in there. Let's do that. All right, man, make it a great day. We're out of here, cheers.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you guys, have fun.
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