I Started A Moving Company At 18 And Now Make $5M/Year
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Uladzislau Kandybovich, but I go by Vlad (imagine spelling my full name out over the phone), and I run Qshark Moving Company. We are a full-service relocation company located in Southern California.
It’s not fancy software or cool branded water, but a service people need and rely on. We are a big part of people’s lives, packing your grandmother's favorite scarf and assembling your newborn’s crib. This may sound sentimental, but there is a huge reward in being a part of the community and living in its memory.
Our flagship service is local residential moving. One of the amazing parts of our business is that everyone is our potential customer. From students relocating closer to the colleges, families moving to bigger places with their kids, or seniors downsizing closer to the beach. I can bet my company that you or someone you know moved in the last year.
Over the last nine years, we grew from a two-person and one-truck operation to a massive multi-city, 45 trucks, 4 locations, 200 employees, and regional business, from making $11 an hour to over $5,000,000 a year in revenue. This is a story from an Immigrant starting a business in the USA at 18 years old, without knowing English, credit history, money, or friends. And a story to empower anyone who is looking to run their own business. You can do it too!
The most practical thing I’ve learned is that I can’t control everything. I can’t control other people, the economy, the machinery, or the weather, but I can control how I react and adapt.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
Let me take you back to 2013 when a 17-year-old me finished a great basketball season with the Belarus Youth National Team. Being one the best players in the country for my age, I was determined my next step should be going to America to compete against the best athletes in the world.
After making a move (I was fortunate to bring my parents with me), everything went my way, and I had a long and great career in the NBA and made a lot of money. I’m sure you've heard of the first Belarussian player in the NBA.
Of course, you didn’t! Because that’s not what happened. I failed miserably, and my basketball dreams crashed quickly, leaving me empty in my heart and confused about what to do with my life.
Few jobs were available without connections, higher education, or English skills. But moving was one of those jobs. So, I took on a job as a helper, making $11 an hour, and my dad took a job as a driver. During that year, we met many people with different ideas and projects. I will never forget that time in the moving truck with my dad on the road, working long hours and sharing our plans. Maybe a little bit less of Dad’s talk, but I was stuck with the man for hours.
We knew we were a good team, and customers loved us. Why work for someone else if you can be your boss? Moving is nothing groundbreaking; we didn’t come up with any ways to innovate the industry, but we did find ways to go the extra mile for our clients and earn their business.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
The hardest part of any business? Coming up with the name (or is it just me?) It’s only after years in business, after many lessons and studies, I now know how important the name is. How you can impact buyers' decisions just by having the right name. Back then, I thought Quick Sharks sounded cool. And it was enough. Only problem? I felt it was too long, so that’s how Qshark was born.
Now we have a name, what’s next? Well, it wasn’t as clear (especially when your English only lets you order fries at McDonalds). There were many regulations, licenses, and other things I needed to consider, but I was lucky. I didn’t know I needed to.
As we started small, we would get letters from different agencies giving out fines every other week because we didn’t have proper documents. Little by little, we were fully compliant.
Keynotes to open a moving company, you will need:
- Registered company (the amount of liability is too great) - $800
- State license for moving company (in California it’s BHGS) ~ $1000
- USDOT number ~ free
- Parking spot
- Moving Supplies ~ $500
While obtaining these along the way, you will have to get auto insurance, workers' compensation insurance, general liability, umbrella insurance, and cargo insurance ~ around $3,000
I learned that you can only achieve something by doing; do not be scared of all the things you need. Start small.
Now, to the fun part: buying our first truck. It wasn’t fun for our salesperson because we had to use six different credit cards, 1500 in cash, to make the 8500 purchase.
To start, we spent close to $15,000 until we saw any returns.
Describe the process of launching the business.
I was terrified of quitting my job since we had bills to pay, but we had a few jobs lined up, and in April 2015, we made our first-ever move. It was a tiny studio move that brought it to $210.
My marketing plan was simple at the time. Getting more reviews equals more customers. Most of our jobs initially would come from Groupon ( we had to offer steep discounts ), but the plan was to get reviews for our Yelp pages. Because of our low pricing, we could fill out the calendar quickly. It didn’t take long until we started getting full-priced jobs from Yelp.
We had a website with some organic traffic, but it was minimal.
Financing would come directly from what we earned from our jobs. At that time, we couldn’t even get a company credit card, and because of the nature of the business, getting any financing remains a big struggle to this day.
To grow, we had to be creative. One of the major costs for our business is equipment. A brand new boxed truck would cost around $70-80k and would take us years to save this amount of money.
Lucky for us, at the time, one of the biggest trucking companies in the US, Uhaul was updating their fleet and would sell their older trucks for cheap. Those were 10-12-year-old trucks with high mileage, so buying them was always risky.
But for the price tag of $7k-12k, they were perfect. Over time, we purchased around 25.
Some of them were terrible and would break down almost daily, but most weren’t giving us any problems.
With these trucks, we served many people and got our name out there, which allowed us to grow further. One good weekend would mean a new truck ( I mean very old but new to us ). Here's a fun fact: This thing needs a lot of gas. About 4 miles a gallon.
So, with no outside investment or conventional financing, we grew using our profits. It was not the fastest way, but taking money from banks or other people can often lead to stress and dependency. For us, going slower worked better in the long run.
At the end of 2023, we moved close to 60,000 people. Locally and out of state. Families and business. Our trucks traveled to 48 states.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
We didn’t wait until we became the biggest moving company in our city/county. We started creating smaller locations 50-60 miles away from each other. And it worked very well for us. Online directories value proximity and relevancy and will always prioritize businesses that are closer to the customer.
Our customer care and reputation have been the biggest driver for your sales. It’s always better to give a discount or even a free service to upset customers. Sometimes it’s a fair discount, sometimes it’s not and there will be people that take advantage of your online reputation.
Currently, around 40% of our leads come from Yelp. This includes organic and paid ads. Because of our 5-star reputation, we can convert jobs from Yelp at a higher % compared to any other source (around 35% of leads will convert to a job).
About 20% comes from Google My Business. Even with a good reputation on Google, the conversion rate is lower, and getting more leads is harder.
30% of the jobs come from Referred customers or returned customers. This is a big part of our business, with around a 75% conversion rate, and for repeat customers, we are not paying acquisition costs again. This includes our email re-engagement campaign. We target all our clients and leads after 11 months after the initial request because people tend to move once a year.
The other 10% come from Organic Google searches, Apartment complex relationships, Flyers, Bing, and Yahoo.
One of the biggest surprises over the years I had is the couple of customers that came from Reddit threads where people simply asked for Moving Company recommendations.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
At the end of 2023, we moved close to 60,000 people. Locally and out of state. Families and business. Our trucks traveled to 48 states. Today, our company is growing at a steady rate, with some years (2018 and 2021 being breakout years for us)
- From 2017 to 2018: 193.72%
- From 2018 to 2019: 29.97%
- From 2019 to 2020: 18.38%
- From 2020 to 2021: 156.40%
- From 2021 to 2022: 20.52%
We are currently working on our brand-new Florida location and making plans to offer franchise opportunities. Because the real estate market slowed down, we had to put many projects on hold and weather the storm.
Moving Business is simple on paper but has a lot of little things to consider:
- Average Moving Bill is $940 for local moving services. About 40% ~ $376 is Workers Salary (including insurance and payroll costs)
- Job acquisition costs, including return customers, amount to $96 on average
- Office costs, including clerks, scheduling, call center, and yard managers, are about $80
- Truck costs, including insurance, parking, supplies, and gas, are about $150 per job
- There will be damages and claims, as well as potential legal fees. On average, it will be $30 per job.
- About $110 will go towards equipment upgrades, business improvement, and feature plans.
With $95 being net income.
Our goal is to improve our SEO and social media presence. Our website was a conversion tool for a long time, and we are trying to turn it into a lead-generating tool.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
One of the biggest mistakes I made as a business owner was not focusing enough on the website. It’s a huge marketing tool and can be very useful if done properly. I relied on PPC, and our business would be better off today if I focused more on SEO.
Hiring people, especially in the beginning, was difficult. What if they break something, what if they are rude? What ifs would fill my head and stop me from acting? But as with any complicated task, I overcame it by doing, making mistakes, learning, and making mistakes again.
The most practical thing I’ve learned (and am still learning) is that I can’t control everything. I can’t control other people, the economy, the machinery, or the weather, but I can control how I react and adapt.
It is crazy but true that the COVID lockdown created the best opportunity for us to grow. Low rates made people buy more houses and move out of cities, remote work allowed people to move out of state. 2020 and 2021 were great years for moving business.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
Here are the things we use:
Hubspot - pricey but very effective customer management tool. We use it to track our customers' calls, and activity and send marketing emails.
Callraill - very good call tracking software. Works very well since most of our leads go through the phone.
Clepis - operation software we created to better service our customers.
Semrush - with my goal of improving SEO performance a tracking tool like this is a must.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I loved “ Shoe Dog” about Phil Knight and Nike. It was very inspiring, especially when I thought the world was crashing down on me, and it was helpful to know that Phil went through things way worse.
I also listen to the Wall Street Journal's “ The Journal” just to stay up to date with what’s going on in the world.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
1) Don’t focus on other people. If something works for them, it doesn’t mean it will work for you. If you think something is a good idea and they don’t? Trust yourself.
There is a saying: The road will be mastered by walking.
2) Consistency. Make a plan and stick to it. Yes, you may be wrong, but you will learn and do better next time. Rarely, something come fast and easy. It takes work and dedication 3) Work-Life balance is very hard when you are a business owner. Make time for yourself, family, and hobbies. Because you will likely work 24/7
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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