Learn how Unicorn Moving increased its revenue by 67% after a new owner takes over with no moving experience.

Jason Bergenske
Hey there! Jason Bergenske here with the Moving Company Owners Podcast. I'm here with Robert from Unicorn Movers out of Austin, Texas. Nice to have you here today.

Robert Dicks
Cool. Thanks a lot for having me, Jason. I'm happy to be here.

Jason Bergenske
So typically we go ahead and start this and I just ask you a little bit about your company. And actually, the first one will be is how do you get into the moving business all right.

Robert Dicks
Well, I'm pretty new to the business, but I know for about two years I was a business broker before this representing sellers. When they were selling the companies and ended up being the client. I didn't know anything about the industry, but I did. I could identify a good company when I see one. And so when this came across the desk, I talked with the owner and we found a good deal to be had. He was at retirement age. He's a lifelong skier and had about three seasons left and his knees decided it was time to go. And I headed off to somebody that could take care of it and grow it. So we had good chemistry. The more I learned about the business, the wildlife, that it's something that is, well, you can't do it over the Internet, right? So it's Amazon-proof, right? We're in central Texas, we're in Austin, Texas, so it's a boomtown. So the more I learned about it, it seemed more like a layup than anything else. So ended up being a good decision. So my job is just to come in here and, you know, keep my mouth shut, my eyes and my ears open to try to break anything.

Jason Bergenske
And that's awesome. And then so like you had mentioned, the company's been open for about 30 years now. I guess 30 years will be next year, right?

Robert Dicks
Yeah, right.

Jason Bergenske
That's awesome. So that's amazing. And that was the original founder that had the company that you bought it from. So that was his baby pretty much. You bought. Yeah. And took over. Is he still involved at all now or For the most part, he gave you the keys and he's he's gone.

Robert Dicks
It was I had the original deal was typically in business sales. It's about a 30-day transition. He stayed around for about two months or so and just made sure that I have my feet under me. And then we continue to be friends to this day. We check in and grab lunch every once in a while. So yeah, it's it's really good situation.

Jason Bergenske
That's what's really cool. And so tell me a little bit as far as the company, you know, you're with the majority of your businesses. You know, obviously, see you have storage there. I see storage vaults behind you. Yeah. But, you know, so tell me a little bit, I guess, you know, what percentage of your business is storage? And you know, what specifically do you do there for your customers?

Robert Dicks
Sure thing. So to storage, we have 300 vaults that accounts for about 8% of our business. We are 99.9% residential, mostly local. We do. Another 20% of our business is probably intrastate inside of Texas. And then another 10 to 15% is nationwide. But we do focus on residential. We're thinking about growing into commercial seems natural, but we've got some work to do kind of optimizing our current systems before we go down that path.

Jason Bergenske
Sure, Yeah. And storage is something I always suggest for every moving company. You know, obviously, you kind of bought into it and you guys already had it. But so many companies don't realize how important storage is to there to the moving aspect of their business. You know, when when I used to run geometric moving storage was a company my grandparents founded back in the sixties. You know, the majority of all moves that moved into our storage was a guaranteed move out from us also versus a moving company that's moving stuff into someone's self-storage. You hope they're going to call you again, but you don't always know. Yeah. And then obviously, you know, it creates a much more lifetime customer for you by allowing them to be able to use your storage. Obviously, you're charging for it, but it just gives you that next connection for their next move. Always.

Robert Dicks
Yeah, I love it.

Jason Bergenske
Yeah, that's awesome. So and so you mentioned that the majority of your business is residential. And so tell me a little bit about how that splits as far as what type of homes are you going after or apartments or what What's the majority of your customer base? Where is it at currently and where are you trying to take it, or is it right where you want it to be?

Robert Dicks
So what I came and I was looking at basically the asset-light levers that we could pull to increase revenue with existing capacity. Right. And like a lot of companies, the prior owner was marketing to everyone, right? And that is just a function of we've been doing it since the nineties, right? So from the yellow page ads to broad-based just internet searches and stuff. But now with today's functionality, you can target the market to pretty much anyone you want to buy zip code. So step one was raising prices. A month after I got here, we moved our hourly rate to an hourly rate up a little over 35%. So that naturally pushed towards an upmarket clientele. And then we targeted all of our marketing towards the wealthier zip codes. The idea being that you know, we're going to be doing the same amount of work anyway, we might as well be able to charge for it. And then the hypothesis, which was theory to me probably, you know, everybody else knows this, was that to a point, whether you're servicing higher-end customers, if you break an ashtray, they're too busy to care right? I mean of appliance here, right? The smaller moves create a lot of your customer service issues, right? So just from that perspective, it was let's focus on just target marketing a little bit. So instead of work, our customer service issues went way down. And that's also not to say our movers are awesome. So they don't we don't have a lot of claims anyway, right? But yeah, it panned out. Our average move revenue went from about 900 bucks to about 2100 bucks. And yeah, so it was just more money. All of our guys are paid as a percentage of the move without pay hourly. Right? So they were happy because we raised prices. They got a 35% raise immediately for the same amount of work. Right. And that allowed us. So that's proved to be a wonderful retention tool we've had in the first three or four months. One of the things that we did was clear out some of the folks that just didn't have great attitudes, you know, or just kind of underperformers and that had a kind of virtuous cycle effect because like everybody that's watching those eight players while work with other great players. So we whittled it down to only eight players and we've had zero turnovers in the last 18 months. Nobody's left right. So from an operational perspective, it's been awesome right? So now we can just focus on growing aggressively but intelligently growing them and growing business.

Jason Bergenske
Sure. Yeah, that's, that's really good. And then as far as so you mentioned how you're paying your employees, which is, I think, a great creative way of paying them and keeping employees because obviously there's more benefit for them to, you know, do better at their job, do it quickly because it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to make more if they take longer to do the job. And then obviously, you know, they're going to take good care of the customer on the side that you're charging the customer. Are you guys doing hourly on those or they're flat prices how do you do your charging to the customers?

Robert Dicks
So it was when I stepped in, it was inventory and hourly and we let the customer decide, which I noticed immediately was creating a little bit of confusion. I mean, on one, on the one hand, you give the customer power of choice. That's good, right? But it required a lot of explaining and education and the quoting process, was a little clunky. So I got advice from a good, ah, a good friend and a great movie company owner. Probably most of your viewers know him. He's pretty prevalent in the industry, but he said just dude, go hourly, it'll simplify your life. Right? And so we did and it's worked great so had to sell. So I think easier for the customer just understand here's your hourly rate plus a trip fee. We get it right. So our focus has been on this kind of getting back to your marketing question, but our goal is to stay in the top 20% as far as highest-priced movers. And but since we've been here, I think we've been we've were the highest price in town and we aim to stay there. We're always in the top 20% and that's good. I mean, the boomers like it because they're aware of that fact. And since they're commission based, they appreciate that too, Right? So so yeah, it's working.

Jason Bergenske
And that's really good. And you know, so and you mentioned, you know, as far as the way that your movers are paid. So I mean, that's an interesting way. Not all movie companies do that, which is actually a good thing for you because that's going to help you keep those movers. Oh, yeah. You also mentioned about you guys originally were inventory and the hourly basis was mixed. I think switching to hourly was the best case. You know, our best solution for you guys is we you know, the movie company we ran, you know in business over 50 years, you know, the majority of the time we were always hourly. And every time we'd try and do something flat price, someone would get the short end of the stick, whether it was the moving company or the customer, right? And that's what we found. Yeah. And, you know, so many times we'd go out to do a move and, you know, a customer has more stuff than they said they were going to have or they promised they were going to get this stuff moved out or they're going to get this packed. And then you get there. And when it's hourly, it's just clean and cut and there are a lot of movie companies that swear by guaranteed price. But I've always found much more success with the hourly price just because it's fairer across the board. If the customer is super prepared, ready to go has the boxes up by the front door, you know, they're trying to save money, right? Then their bill is going to be less expensive because it going to take you less versus you get there. How many times you know, our crews or go out to a job and the customer told us what we were, move in, and then we get there and they forgot to tell us there's, you know, 200 Christmas boxes in the attic. Right. And then they're upset that the bill is more.

Robert Dicks
Right. Yeah. I learned quickly. And I also just realized this as a customer and myself, the inventory, what really made the decision was Alex and closets and garages that everybody forgets about. Right? And so it's like, yeah, of course. Okay. Hourly it is.

Jason Bergenske
That's good. So and you kind of mentioned a few things, but I mean, what other than the way you do your pricing structure, are you to your employees, what other you know, the difference does you find with your company versus the competitors that are in your market.

Robert Dicks
Yeah. So we price on or we don't compete on my name. It's right. My main message coming in was we are no longer competing on price, we're competing on the quality that the original owner was like tons of business owners. It's very natural. Very hesitant to raise the price. I mean, there's a lot of fear of the unknown there. Orderly get it right. But I had the good fortune of walking in at the end of April going into pieces, and I was like, Let's just run a 60-day experiment. We're going to price higher than anybody in town and just see what happens. Like a lot of companies were booking like 2 to 3 weeks out. But so the downside risk of that experiment wasn't going to be a doomsday event anyway, right? So let's just see what the market can bear and see if it works. And so we did it and then we ended up keeping our prices up and we decreased it a little. Three letters, you know, but not by much. Not by much, you know. And yeah, just introduced a little bit of, you know, like dynamic pricing model, right? So I mean, if you're booked out at 85% two weeks, then tweak up or tweet down, you know, and just, you know, pay attention. But yeah, I was fully planning on a drop in prices in October and then was like, why now? How would we do that? You know, we just it's working. So so yeah, it's going okay. But to your question, we wouldn't charge that much unless we could stand behind it. Right. And so the average mover has been here. We don't hire anyone with less than two years of experience and we hire on attitude. You know, you got hard skills and you got add skills. You can have an experienced super stud that has a terrible attitude, right? Or somebody that doesn't have as much experience but is coachable and willing to learn. Right? So we are on that side. And so yeah, the average for our movers is eight years. Some guys have been here for pushing 20 years. The office staff, our kind of manager has been here for 20 years. Everybody else has been here for over five. So I mean the previous owner just built a sticky good culture. Right? And I can say with total confidence, every one of our guys is an A-plus player, right? So they're awesome at customer service. And even though we're charging more than the competition, always our reviews say we got great value for our money.

Jason Bergenske
Yeah, and that's great. How was it? It just kind of led me to another question there. So you came into the company never being in the moving industry before and a bunch of your employees that now you were their boss, have been there for 20 years. What was that dynamic like as far as was it amazing you had no issues at all? Were there some that you had to fight back from and you ended up letting go? What was kind of the dynamic there?

Robert Dicks
So I cheated with the price increase right? Just walk in and everybody gets a 35% raise. Everyone gets a raise. Everybody gets a raise. So you look like a hero, you know, not of your own merit, really. So but so it was big smiles. A lot of folks were loyal to the old owner, but he was very gracious and talked me up before I got here so badly. I went to sell this to some jerk for the highest price. Right? So he really set the table for my success. He didn't have to do that, right? So it was on him and then just sat down and spent a lot of time with every single person, identifying some of the people that didn't have great attitudes. And then there was just the standard, you know, people that like I mean, not to be crappy, but like seeds, you know, and people that would overcharge and things like that. And so I didn't want to make a bunch of operational changes and freak everybody out. But I did the clean house in summer when it and all my fear was, Oh dear, here comes the hatchet man. Ah, we all go in there, get fired here. Right. But I was pretty transparent about it. And it turns out all the remaining employees, which were like 70% of them, totally appreciate it because they know that some of the jerks were jerks, Right? So every way that remained, I mean, it's not the bright side. It's but they're the big smiles ever since because they're all we have a firm no way holds the role. Right. And it's it works.

Jason Bergenske
And I think that's one of the most important things you know about culture within your company, which has to do with mindset and attitude. Right. Is one of the most important things that should be protected the most within the company. Totally. And so many companies, they start out and especially moving companies, the busy season comes around and they're just trying to cover their jobs and so they're picking up anyone and everyone they can to bring on to help move to cover the jobs that have. And what they don't realize in doing that is they're bringing on it's almost like cancer. And when you bring cancer into your business, into your home, into your life, right? It latches on everything else. I've, you know, experiences and several businesses I've owned by having an employee that we knew we should let go that didn't have the greatest attitude or had issues. And we kept them. And then before you know it, now we have three employees that have the same attitude and mindset. Before, you know, it's five employees and it goes on and on and on. And by the time you end up letting them all go, you end up cleaning the house like you had to do. And then everyone else that we're the good employees or the really positive, encouraging ones, they're the ones that are saying, why did it take you guys so long to get rid of them?

Robert Dicks
Right, Right.

Jason Bergenske
You know, I was waiting on this day. Right. And it's just so many times moving company or something come out. It's any business. We're scared of letting people go to make sure we have coverage. We're scared of letting people go to you because this person's always been here or they've been, you know, they're always reliable, even though they don't have a good attitude or whatever it is. So I think that's a great thing that you're able to come in and do.

Robert Dicks
Yeah, yeah, you're right. It is a very slippery slope. We've all read the business blog advice about how even if it's your top salesperson, fire them if they're a jerk. Right. And easy to say, hard not to do. Right. But it's so important. I mean, as you said, it spreads, it affects everything, and it's never going to end up better as you waited too long. Right. So also now life's too short to work with negative people, man. Do you know? So, yeah, it's working. And I consider my main job here as the standard bearer. We have aggressive growth goals for this year, but we will not hire warm bodies to achieve those goals. We have to maintain the standard rate. So if we don't have a revenue goal, I am fine with that. If we maintain a culture.

Jason Bergenske
That's awesome. So that kind of moves us to the next thing there, just to kind of give the viewers a little bit of an idea of the size of your company. I know we've kind of mentioned a little bit earlier, we talked about you've been in the business for 30 years. And I think it's interesting and I'll let you kind of answer it. But, you know, you bought the company right in the middle or at the end of COVID, I guess. 2020, Right?

Robert Dicks
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Bergenske
So that's an interesting time to buy a business. There are not too many people buying businesses. In April 2021. And so kind of give us an idea of what the revenue was. You know, maybe the previous 12 months before you came into the business, which still is great numbers. And then once you took over and got rid of the people that weren't the right people for the company and did the price increase and started changing some of the stuff. And obviously a lot of it I'm sure has to do with your amazing team where you guys then got up for last year.

Robert Dicks
Yeah. So during the last ten years let us start a little bit previous it had been hanging out at 1.5 million just cruising along all good And then unlike most business owners when they're going to sell, they have an oh shit, hit the gas because you're going to, you're going to sell your sale price. It's going to be a multiple of your net income. So revenue starts counting, right? So he drove it. And the previous 18 months prior to the sale from about 1.5 to I bought it when it was at $2.1 million trailing 12 months right from there, raised prices and then raised revenue per move and we got to 3 million by the end of 2021, and finished up 2020 to just over 3.5 million. And we're looking to hit 5 million by the end of this year.

Jason Bergenske
And then so obviously some of your expenses went up with that because you gave everyone raises, I guess, on as far as truck costs and stuff like that. Did those go up also or not really, because you're kind of still doing around the same amount of jobs that we just increased revenue for each job.

Robert Dicks
Right? Yeah. Well, so we've taken on two new leases. All the trucks were owned, so we have ten trucks that we own. But it's something that I'm going to need to address in the coming years because there are some dinosaurs out there. We've got one and a half mechanics here that are busy. Right. But I mean, some of these guys are all Cummins internationals. They have good bones. But dude, I mean, some of this odometer stopped at 400,000 miles five years ago.

Jason Bergenske
When you say, one-and-a-half mechanics?

Robert Dicks
One part. So fair. So one full-time, one part time has been here. The part-timer has been here for 25 years. So that's awesome. Full-timers, I mean, they're studs and they are busy, right? So we need to do some planning and turnover because some of those things are all duct tape and baling wire, you know.

Jason Bergenske
But for local goods For local.

Robert Dicks
Yeah, good for locals. Yeah, we actually specifically just at Penske leases we got them for the other state moves just as a service.

Jason Bergenske
We used to do the same. Yeah, we used to do enterprise and anything that went the long distance. So it was an enterprise and they're actually long-term leases, but they're amazing because you get a flat tire, you get dead battery, you get anything you don't, You guys, they call Enterprise and deal with it and they have a repair person out there pretty quickly.

Robert Dicks
So that's nice.

Jason Bergenske
Nice. So, that's great. And then so as far as your marketing stuff, did you change that specifically when you took it over, or like what stuff were they doing before you purchased it and was there a bunch you got rid of or just added to it or kind of what? What did that look like?

Robert Dicks
So we were doing mailers in the house and it was like with old-school Microsoft, it wasn't efficient, right? There are a bunch of turnkey solutions that your customers now have. Now we flip to that just for efficiency pricing. I mean, the cost was about the same, right? We had had a marketing firm that was the owner of being used for about ten years, but my complacency had set in right And there weren't there wasn't very much proactivity. Right? So I shopped at marketing firms and went through about two or three before finding Shout out Brian Bloom. mover search marketing awesome and we found he and his team made a huge difference. I told them the spirit and the intent of what we were trying to do as far as directing toward up market and they executed. And I've just done their work and it has worked.

Jason Bergenske
Right? That's really good. So yeah, and the mailers is something, it's, you know, it's a controversial thing, especially if you're in the groups on Facebook and stuff or there are moving company owners. I'll tell you, we did. We did them also and they worked amazing for us. It has gotten to the point where we were doing several hundred thousand dollars, you know, every year and had gotten almost half a million dollars for a year of just mailers that we could track.

Robert Dicks
And there's a lot there that you can't track. You know, for instance, they got your postcard, and even though you have a QR code on it, they hit your landing page, but then they don't request an estimate right then. But then a couple of weeks later, they come back to your website. So anyway.

Jason Bergenske
You know. It it's so amazing. But the big key to it is you got to stick with it. So many moving companies will try it for a couple of weeks or a month. And then they said, Oh, I'm not getting anything from it. So you got to stick with it because that's the big key and you got to get them out as fast as possible. They need to be going out to the people that are just listed. Their home just went under contract. So that's great. You guys are doing it. Do you happen to know like a percentage of your business that's coming from that?

Robert Dicks
I haven't looked at it lately. Just that's just me.

Jason Bergenske
If you had to guess?

Robert Dicks
25, 30%.

Jason Bergenske
Yeah. It's, it's a big number. Like, I mean.

Robert Dicks
Oh, totally. Yeah. But, you know what? They're getting mailed out four times a week when they go on the market and then pending. Right. Yeah. But yeah you're is not an overnight solution at all. And then just dialing in the content and all that type of stuff. But I would, it's like I know it's different effectiveness, it's different market to market, you know, but yeah, the other owners that I know, they wouldn't give it up for the world.

Jason Bergenske
Yeah, that's really good. So being in the business for a couple of years, I mean what are one or two things that you've made mistakes that you've made either in the business or, you know, in purchase in the business or whatever, that you either would or would not do. Again, you know, all of us I mentioned this in most of my podcast, you know, there's a lot of mistakes I've made in the past that I would do over and over and over and over again because they're what got me to where I'm at now.

Robert Dicks
Oh, sure. Yeah.

Jason Bergenske
So, yeah, just curious to hear, you know, your take on that. And, and I also always mention this. I love to learn from other people's mistakes rather than mine. So is a good time for you to tell me about your mistakes so I can learn from it?

Robert Dicks
Fair enough. So, ah, to come to mind one is continuing marketing in the marketing conversation I do on trackable things, right? So I've been a lifelong NPR fan and so we are so NPR radio ads all over the place. Great production. They hold up there under the deal, but it just wasn't that effective for us. And also is very hard to measure because people hear a unicorn somewhere. And then when it comes time to How did you hear about us? Google? Yeah, right. So we just can't measure it. The same thing went for we're advertising with the University of Texas Longhorns just in all their you know, programs, basketball programs, all that type of stuff. Cool. But we didn't have QR codes attached. And even if they saw us or gained awareness of us through that stuff, Google. Right. So just staying there are so many options. Marketing options. Why wouldn't you just stick with what you can track, right? So that's what we're doing now. And then the second mistake would be it's not in the state yet, but it could burn us in customer concentration, right? Like, As I mentioned, I was in the business brokerage industry before this and we would always customer concentration is a big deal, right that way to find customer concentration as one customer or a group of customers contributing to 18% or more of your business. Right? Because of that, business goes away. Obviously, you're in trouble. And so we some of our top-notch some of our top one and top two customers there that are move majors and they're awesome. And we love them, but they count for upwards of 25% of our business right? So it's good now. But as far as just sleep at night, if something happened to their business, we take a major hit, right? So, you know, knock on wood, we're working with them forever. But our solution is just to grow all the other sides of the business and get that down below 15% now.

Jason Bergenske
And I think that's a great realization. And for you to see it and actually be able to prevent it before it could become a problem because it's exactly right. I mean, you know, one of those companies that makes up 20% of your business, you have no control over them continuing to be a customer. And obviously, to you, you do everything you can to make them happy and provide exceptional service and this, that, and the other. But you never know if you know, the owner of that company ends up, you know, their son, marrying someone that owns a moving company. And now I said, you're like, right. I mean, but that's happened. That used to happen to us when we would do we did a ton of retirement community moves. I mean, where were you doing five, six, seven a week every week? People moving and moving out, moving them, changing rooms, doing all this stuff, and you'd have them for a few years. Everything would be perfect. And then the person that was in charge to hire and the movers got fired. And now a new person comes in and now the new person knows someone that owns a moving company that's one of their friends. And so who do you think they're going to keep using? Do you think they're going to keep using you whom they don't have a relationship with or their friend and like that, you're out, you know, And so that's just one of the things that I think is great advice to that you're giving is always making sure that you never have one customer or two customers, you know, whatever it is, making up a big percentage of your business.

Robert Dicks
Yeah, you're spot on. Jason Yeah, and that's just a business development effort. You know, I it's just shaking hands. That's it. So yeah, but what, that one.

Jason Bergenske
Yeah. Now that's great. All right. So typically we do what's called quickfire questions, which is my six questions are going to ask. They're not as much related to the moving business. They're more related to you. So just questions that, you know, gets our viewers to kind of know a little bit more about you. So anyway, so if you're ready.

Robert Dicks
Yeah.

Jason Bergenske
What's the best piece of business advice you have ever received?

Robert Dicks
So this one actually does relate a little bit to the current, to the moving business or with any kind of physical business is good. Go deep instead of wide, right? Meaning don't. So a lot of moving companies I see have a place in Houston and then a place in Dallas. And then Phenix. And then Miami. And then Denver. Right. Which creates a lot of operational issues. Right. And plus, unless you just like getting on airplanes a lot, it's not the most efficient way to go about it. Right. So this is kind of geographically specific to us, but we're in the Texas Triangle, right? So you got Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin's kind of in the middle. Our strategy is to stay inside that triangle. I think it's eight or 9% of the nation's wealth is right there. So go way deep in that triangle before we ever think about crossing state lines. There is enough gold to be extracted from here. Then before we just go to Fort Lauderdale for the heck of it. Right. So that's one. The second I learned from this is broker thing, which is business acquisition is kind of a cheat code, right? It's the easiest way to grow my money because I've been in a startup. Ten years ago I did a rideshare startup for about five years doing it at the Startup Slogs, and learned a ton. It was cool, but the whole, you know, like, was that the Peter Thiel book, this famous 0 to 1 that's famous and startup communities? Okay, I did your one on Peru, a bunch of gray hair doing it. Are and then said wait a minute you come by a business and go from 1 to 10 and work 40 hours a week, you know, walk in and the cash flow. Why would you not? And, you know, we're you know, from a generational perspective, there's something all the baby boomers are retiring right now. They call it the great waves or anomaly, whatever you want to call it. There is a massive exit of the boomers or baby boomers exiting the business, getting out of great businesses. Right. And a lot of those people don't even know that business sales are an option, right? They're just going to lock the door, turn off the light, fire, everybody. Right. So I would highly recommend considering if you want to extend it to another city, instead of just starting from zero in that new city, just contact, you know, a biologist or whatever. Figure out who the people are that are currently there and just start a conversation. Hey man, y'all look at our retirement, you know, and if you're looking at selling or closing, are you willing to talk? Right? And you can shave years off, you know.

Jason Bergenske
And we did the same when we owned J&J Metro Moving and Storage. We had bought, I don't know, five competitors that were to us, household transfer, Osceola moving. And every single one of them came with amazing things, storage right there behind our crates. Literally, as soon as we bought them, their storage was more than enough to pay just for what we paid for the moving companies over the years.

Robert Dicks
No kidding.

Jason Bergenske
Also, yeah. So as soon as the sale went through, we immediately sent trucks over to go pick up crates and bring them back to our own facility, which was own came with trucks that we didn't need. So we sold them, which came with equipment, pads, and dollies. We all can use more of those that came with. Some also ended up being good.

Robert Dicks
Yeah. Hey, no, it's fantastic. And you know, kind of doubling down on that if you want to. One of the things we're looking at kind of expanding into is other home services, right? So janitorial service, cleaning, things like that baby track plumbing, you know, because the moving company, obviously it could be a lead generator for all of those things. Right. Do I have the appetite to go started each that company now you know or the expertise right so growing by just plucking up some of those?

Jason Bergenske
Now so what's one attribute or characteristic of a successful founder would you say?

Robert Dicks
This might sound a little trite, but the ability to say no and focus? I mean, as entrepreneurs we are. Good idea. Gary, all day long. And it's especially that for the last 20 years with technology, the ability to focus for more than 2 minutes on anything, you got so much stuff screaming at you, you know, I mean, there are always going to be a hundred opportunities and good ideas out there. So being able to say no and just focus on what you're doing, make a plan, execute the plan. We have good ideas. Say awesome. Agreed. That's a good idea that we will take a look at next year. That's huge. And I'm pointing right back at myself. I am the king of rabbit trails, you know. But yeah, not just being able to make a plan and execute that plan and not get diverted. That's easily the number one characteristic, I'd say.

Jason Bergenske
That's great. What's your favorite personal productivity tool and why?

Robert Dicks
Same thing. Meditation absolutely focuses on the mind and also can't sit down. But kind of getting back to what's important, it's a noise-canceling prayer for your brain, you know, and it's easy and cheap. And you can do it anywhere, right? I mean, you know, but and I know it's going to gain popularity and that's awesome, right? But it seems like, you know, not just in business, but in life. I mean, we are in the age of distraction and, you know, and just to sit quietly with yourself and actually think without any inputs. Yeah, dude, that's like a superpower these days, you know? So, I mean, to the point where I'm such a dork, I teach my kids to do it right and breathing exercises and stuff. I just because they've got so much stuff thrown out all the time. So the ability to actually like there's so much stuff rolling around our noggins, but we're constantly reading more books and listening to more stuff and it's just there are all these inputs. So to actually be able to process that stuff, we're not sleeping right, And just what good I the really good ideas and focus come to you. Yeah, that's a layup and meditation.

Jason Bergenske
That's good. So what is a new or crazy business idea you would do if you had time?

Robert Dicks
Christmas lights. Christmas lights. I'm a huge Christmas dork. My wife makes fun of me all the time. It's bad. We start Christmas Jazz and our music in our office the day after Halloween. So I'm taking my life for my answer. But we slow down a winner and we've done the typical let people go, you know, in November and hire them back in March, which I have never wanted to do again. Right. So I have a house. We had a Christmas light professionally installed this past year. I got the bill. It was like, Oh, this is how much. Wow. Okay. But then I started asking the guy about it. Turns out that guy was over in South Carolina and says, You want to buy this? I was like, No, wait, what? I know. How long is this okay? Because I mean, like like a lot of landscaping companies do that they flip the Christmas legislation for the same reasons. Right? So I'm actually taking a hard look at doing training and take a look. I mean, frankly, for the ticket, these guys could make way more doing that when we're slow. So instead of letting them go and it's just medium skills, right? Need to learn it on YouTube. So yeah well what's it he walked up my scratch the Christmas sure enough to keep my employees and a family sane and also have employer retention during the letter.

Jason Bergenske
Yeah that's good. What is one fun or interesting fact about you that almost nobody knows?

Robert Dicks
Well, in this piece, I don't tell a lot of people about it. It was a long time ago, but in the Air Force for eight years and I had a lot of interesting experiences because I was in the early 2000s right. And, you know, it's a good experience to have behind you, but it's a giant perspective builder. And that's been actually super helpful for me in life as far as a stress reducer because we had a grizzled wolf look like George Clooney, like the pepper hair path. And to see a master sergeant that whenever anybody would like to knock on his door and freak out and helmet fire, oh, this is happening and all this stuff, you know, he'd say, stop, stop, you know, somebody dead or about to be dead. You say, no. And that is like the hallway. Collect yourself, come back in 2 minutes, and let's talk. Right. So that whenever now I look, I get stressed out about anything. I kind of picture that guy and I'm like, okay, what's the doomsday situation here? Property damage. Okay, relax. You know, so.

Jason Bergenske
Oh, that's interesting. Well, thank you for your service for sure. Eight years. Oh, sure. That's. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thank you. What's one of the most important passions outside of work?

Robert Dicks
Outside of my family? Travel bananas for? I know a lot of people are, but, I mean, it is the biggest education tool yet. Also, same thing, perspective, you know? So I go into a bunch of cooking places. My wife and I have an agreement where, you know, like every year we take a just from the trip and then the trip with the family. And then I take a solo trip to places that she has zero interest in going ever. Right. And those are my favorite places to go, right? So. So yeah. So travel.

Jason Bergenske
That's awesome. So that's it for usually, for the most part, that's it. I had one question that came to me as far as your storage back there. So you're in the same facility there did you move at all when you bought the company or that's where you guys have always been for the last several years?

Robert Dicks
Yeah, he bought this to spec 20 years ago or so. So the real estate came with the deal.

Jason Bergenske
So do you know how long the oldest container is in there? Not the container, but how long someone stored stuff in there. That's been the longest, you know.

Robert Dicks
2004.

Jason Bergenske
Ha, that. Amazing.

Robert Dicks
I, I can totally believe it, but I can't believe it. Yeah. We've got probably 15 storage customers that have been here for over ten years. And, you know, you don't have the heart to raise the rates on them. I raise storage rates on them. I know it's a bad business decision, but I mean, I think some of these customers, you know, that are seniors now that's been here for 15 years are paying something like 12 raspberries a month or something for storage, you know, and it's just like absolutely nothing. But there was actually a really cool one that we opened up. The guy was a vinyl records broker from way back in the day, the sixties, and seventies. And you just said, Hey, keep the stuff like I don't need it anymore. And so we opened it up and there were 12,000 records on that thing in the plastic. And some of these things. I don't have the time to go into some project later than working with the old owner on it. But I mean, there's, I think some really kind of cool, valuable stuff there. That's really cool. Yeah.

Jason Bergenske
The question had come to me because we had someone that we had moved probably, I don't know, back in the mid-nineties and they were the husband had gotten relocated and they were moving to China, but they're back the next year to buy a vacation home. And so they put the stuff in storage. 1500 dollars a month was their storage. The big house down in Windermere here in the Orlando area? Yeah, in about 2000 they called. So 15 years later. Wow. And said, hey, we've been paying all this time. They paid out like $200,000 in storage over 20 years. We got we're going to be coming back to Orlando in a few weeks. And we had some family pictures we wanted to get out of our storage and then find out what you guys would charge to just throw away everything else. No way we could have at that time, they got about a $200,000 house and put all the stuff in storage for 20 years and never paid us a penny. And literally. And so they came nice as could be, weren't upset, didn't want. But there are people it's part of doing business with people that has the means to and have money it's that was a customer that had been moved out of you know, apartment or something. They would have been mad at the moving company that they had paid all this money and they never got their stuff out right. Versus these people. They didn't care. They just want to come to get their stuff and how much to dispose of it. So, look, we're not going to charge to dispose of any of it. We'll take care of it. But they made a little over $200,000 in storage. And so the point and why I brought that up, what is interesting, you even you have one since 2004 is is moving companies that have not broken into storage yet. They've got to get into storage because so many people.

Jason Bergenske
So many people if you can do it, but so many people put their stuff in storage thinking they're going to get it out in six months, thinking they're going to get it out in a month, they're not going to get it out in a year, and it just stays in storage forever. Yeah, and it helps. I'll tell you, even for our moving company, our storage revenue more than covered all of our building costs, our office costs, and our office payroll it covered all of it. And it's not free money, but it's like free money. I mean, once this storage is full, it just keeps coming in, you know?

Robert Dicks
Yeah. Like you said before it turns one move into two. Right. But then yeah, as a customer, remember this is ten years ago, you know, my dad passed away and I cleaned out his house through what the storage said. I'll deal with it later. And then every year I like I deal with it this year and I'm good and punched. Right. And five years later I opened it up, and throw it all directly into the dumpster. Right? Because, yeah, it's just it's out of sight, out of mind, and it's just easier to let the thing take your credit card right now. So, yeah, no, highly encourage it if you have the means to do so. Take a look.

Jason Bergenske
When we get into it, we've got well, perfect. Well, thank you so much for your time today and I really appreciate it. It's awesome to hear how you've taken the moving company, which was already a successful moving company, without a doubt, about being able to, you know, add so much revenue to it within two years since you've had it. And I think you mentioned your goal now for the end of this year was to hit five, was that correct? Yes. So five million by the end of this year. So if you're a competitor over there in Texas, you better watch out because he's coming there.

Robert Dicks
That's awesome. Now, I really appreciate your time, Jason. There's been a lot of fun.

Jason Bergenske
Thank you all. Very good. I appreciate you. Have a good rest of the day. And if you need anything, just let us know. Thank you.

Robert Dicks
I appreciate You having a good one.