Episode #168: He Turned Down Shark Tank and Built a $300M Business... But Was It Worth It? Featuring Nick Friedman

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast

Nick Friedman details the twenty-year journey of scaling College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving from a single cargo van to a $300 million enter

Key takeaways

• College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving has grown to approximately 200 franchises with $300 million in annual sales.
• The brand uses the HUNKS acronym (Honest, Uniform, Nice, Knowledgeable Service) to redefine its identity and service promise.

Main topics

• Entrepreneurial scaling
• Shark Tank experience

Notable quotes

I call it a 20-year overnight success.

Conclusion

A profound look at the intersection of massive business growth and the

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) I call it a 20-year overnight success. We now have roughly 200 franchisees around the country, you know, 300 million annual sales. I lost a patch of my hair in the first year of the business. I think I went away for like my first vacation, but I was so stressed out coming back trying to pick up the pieces that I missed. I can hustle hard and grind and push forward, but there's a certain limit that your body will allow you. And then when I was younger, it was even worse because I was trying to burn the candle at both ends of the spectrum. First episode of Shark Tank. I understand you probably felt pressure, but the show was brand new, so you had maybe not as much pressure as... after you've seen it. Plus, you're going into that thing blind. We didn't know these sharks were going to become TV celebrities. We just thought Mr. Wonderful was a jerk. He was kind of poisoning the room by just beating us up and calling us pigs. I want them to bring me on as a guest shark and put me next to Mr. Wonderful because one of the things he said to us is... Speaker 2 (0:44) Here's an interesting question. How much do you actually know about the way your everyday habits are supporting how you age? We hear so much about longevity right now. Sleep, protein, strength training, nutrition. All of these things matter. But there's another layer that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should. What's happening inside your cells? Your mitochondria produce the cellular energy that your body relies upon every day. And mitochondrial dysfunction? That's considered a central hallmark of aging. And that's why I've been so interested in the work Timeline does with Midopure. Midopure is their pure and patented form of urolithin A. It supports mitochondrial function and cellular renewal by activating mitophagy, your body's natural process for clearing out damaged mitochondria. But rather than just tell you about it, Timeline wants you to think about your own longevity habits. So they've created a longevity quiz that takes just a few minutes and it looks at some of the everyday habits that can support healthy aging. And the best part? If you complete the quiz, Timeline will send you a free sample of Might Appear gummies. So take the quiz, learn a little bit more about how you're supporting the way you age, and try Might Appear for yourself. Go to Timeline.com slash Jamelli to take the longevity quiz and get your free gummies. That's Timeline.com slash Jamelli. Speaker 1 (2:04) All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Jamelli podcast. Speaker 2 (2:07) So I have a different kind of discussion today that I am really, really excited to because I... I come from a business background, actually an entrepreneurial side, and I really want to tie in what it's like to run a massive business and company and how it affects your health and your mental stability and then just the thoughts, the everyday work that goes into managing family, business, and something of this size. And so the conversation today is going to be amazing. And on another level, my guest was on the very first episode. of one of my all-time favorite shows, Shark Tank. And he is the co-founder of College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving. And I'm telling you, man, what he has done with this company is on an entirely different level. And I have the most profound respect for what you have done, the grind, the effort, where it started, your story. So we're going to have a blast today, my friend. Thank you for coming to see me. And I can't wait to get into everything about you. So without further ado, Nick Friedman. Speaker 1 (3:10) Appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me here. Speaker 2 (3:12) Awesome, man. Thanks for getting down here and making this happen with me. I know, you know, I am always supremely humbled by people taking the time and value and talking to me and coming to see me. And I was just telling my wife today, I said, you know, some people will say I have to today. And I say, I get to. You know, I get to interview you today. I get to have these awesome conversations and I get to show you to the world. Speaker 1 (3:36) Yeah. So that's the goal. It's a great framework to think from. We got to remind ourselves that all the time. Yeah. Especially as a business owner, because there's many times where you're like, oh, I got to do this. I got to do that. It's like we chose to do this. We get to do this. Speaker 2 (3:48) Yes. Yes. So, all right. College hunks. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the premise, how that even came to fruition. And that is an extremely. smart way to go about things. And it's really intriguing. So where did that come from? Speaker 1 (4:04) Yeah, I mean, it's Speaker 2 (4:05) a Speaker 1 (4:05) really simple story. We were in college, hence the name. We were getting ready for our senior year of college. Me and my buddy and I from high school, we were best buddies. And we were home for summer vacation. And his mom had a beat-up cargo van from her furniture store. And so she said to us, hey, why don't you guys use the van? You can move people's furniture. You can haul people's junk away. And then she looked at us and she goes, you guys could be college hunks who haul junk. And we just kind of laughed about it at first. And we were like, well, that's kind of catchy. That's not what you typically associate with movers or haulers. So we just made these computer printout flyers, stuck them in mailboxes. People had a need for the service. They thought the name was catchy. And that was the first light bulb moment for me. It's like, wow, this could be an opportunity here. We went back to school our senior year. We graduated. We got. quote unquote, regular jobs in the real world for a very brief period of time and said, you know what, this is unfulfilling. Why don't we go try and make that business a year round venture? And of course, you know, most college kids would do that in the summer and then go do something in Speaker 2 (4:55) the Speaker 1 (4:55) real world and never think about it again. And we decided to make it a year round venture. I call it a 20 year overnight success. We now have roughly 200 franchisees around the country, you know, 300 million annual sales. So it's been quite a journey starting from that humble beginnings with the beat up cargo van. But But, yeah, it was a lot of skeptics when we got into it, especially after college. They were like, oh, that was cute what you were doing in school in the summer, but to make it a full-time business, is that really what you're going to do with your career? And we wanted to prove those folks wrong, so we just kind of kept getting after it. Speaker 2 (5:25) So people follow me because I keep it real. I don't worry about being politically correct. I just say whatever. And let's face it, you don't associate a college hunk or anybody of that stature with a mover. Speaker 1 (5:37) Yeah. I mean, historically. Right. And I think moving is elevated as an industry as a whole. I think we've been a part of that elevation. But, you know, people kind of pictured, you know, maybe some some less than sophisticated individuals that are pretty grimy or bootstomping or tobacco spitting, whatever the case that are come, you know, mess up your furniture and track mud all throughout your house. And so we were trying to put, you know, a cleaner collegiate. friendlier image to sort of unglamorized business. And, you know, of course, it was easy for us to put a funny name on it and bright orange and green colors. But where the challenge came is how we were going to actually be intentional about delivering a on that service expectation. Yeah. You know, we had to deal with the questions of, hey, are they all going to really be in college? Are they all going to really be hunks? So we said, hey, we'll keep the name college. That's part of our heritage. They don't have to be exclusively college students working for us. And hunks, we made it into an acronym. We said it stands for Honest, Uniform, Nice, Knowledgeable Service. So that's become our brand promise. a way to redefine the term hunks so that we can say, hey, yes, we hire all hunks that's going to deliver that service. And if we're hiring you, we're teaching you that that's what you're going to deliver. That's what our clients are expecting. And so it's more than just the physical attributes. But what we found, what I did find is because we had kind of, let's call it a silly or provocative or gimmicky name, it was a conversation starter. Like people were like, oh, you know, even the fact they were asking questions and I started getting annoyed with those questions very quickly. I was like, wait, they're asking questions. They're curious about. why we called it that or what we actually do. And sometimes they would have sort of false assumptions. You guys only move college students? And I'd be like, no, we move homeowners. We move businesses. We haul junk away. We clean out people's houses. We started in college. And then I got to tell the story. And so people connect to the story, as you know. And I think that allowed us to create a one-to-one conversation. But ultimately, we were able to do it through mainstream media, through branding. And that's, I think, been a key to some of our growth trajectory. What Speaker 2 (7:27) I really like is the acronym. And you've you know, having a way of conveying what it really means. And Speaker 1 (7:32) that was an evolution. Like we read this book called the purple cow by Seth Godin. And the concept is really simple. If you're driving down a country road and you see Speaker 2 (7:38) a Speaker 1 (7:38) field of brown cows, you've seen it before. You're going to keep driving. But if there's a purple cow in the field, you're going to pull over. You're going Speaker 2 (7:43) to Speaker 1 (7:43) take notice. And nowadays you'll put it on social media. You'll tell your friends and neighbors about it. And really the premise there is how to stand out in a crowded space. And for us, we didn't invent the next Google or Facebook. We were taking a traditional business, trucks and labor, putting a creative rapper in the name. you know, bright and shiny image and color contrast. And then we realized, well, the name and the colors is kind of the sizzle, but you're going to eat the cow. You need the steak too for, you know, if it tastes bad, you're not going to be telling people about it. So when we realized that our service wasn't really keeping up with the sizzle of the name and the colors that got people to pay attention, that's when we kind of had to dig in and say, okay, how do we train these frontline employees that, you know, maybe haven't had customer service experience before, haven't gone into the types of homes that we're sending them into to, you know, move people's prized possessions. How do we treat them to have compassion and empathy for whatever state, you know, that the client is in and whatever life event that they're dealing with to deliver a positive experience? So it is sort of that purple cow differentiator. And so, you know, easier said than done. It's like I said, none of it was a quick switch of the, you know, of a, you know, light switch. It was like. evolutionary and continuous intention. And, you know, those micro efforts turned into macro results over an extended period of time. I love that. And Speaker 2 (8:57) so there's negative connotations with anything that you look at, right? I mean, that's just life, fundamental. And people are wired that way. So for you to, one, pick an industry that's already got that, two, take another term that carries something on it, and then to become successful with it, to overcome different polarizing areas that people are going to attack. And then to come up with the acronym, like I said that you did, I think that is so phenomenal because I didn't know beforehand that's what that meant. So do you... In your marketing strategies, do you convey the actual true meaning more now? We do. Speaker 1 (9:35) I think we can do a better job of it, quite frankly. We actually just produced these TV commercials. And again, here we are 20 years later from when we started the business. And the commercial starts out with the operator saying, College Hunks, honest, uniform, nice, knowledgeable service. And so it kind of like it has the hunks acronym up on the screen. And then, you know, she's almost like a flow insurance, progressive insurance type character. And then she's, you know, cute. flips to the guys moving the furniture in the house or hauling the junk away. And so, yes, I think as a consumer brand, which is really what we are, we've got to be constantly telling the story, promoting the business, sharing examples of what we do. And then, of course, we've also looked inward and said, how do we build a great culture, purpose-driven, values-based, socially conscious that... the team members want to be a part of and the franchise owners want to be involved with. And so, yeah, a lot of that, you know, was kind of reading through reading and books or going to, you know, mentorship events or masterminds or, you know, creating peer groups because we didn't have podcasts like this or, you know, other types of resources in those early days or even, you know, AI, you know, chat bots to be able to kind of give us some of the answers. But a lot of it, we sort of had to be resourceful and, you know, kind of figure out what was working, what was not working. overcome sort of the, like you said, some of the stigma that people might have about the name or the, you know, or the fact that it's, you know, an industry that's, you know, maybe unglamorous, but for us, it was all about kind of how do we keep elevating that? And it was kind of fun. We made a game out of it. And that's why I think we're still sort of excited and energetic even 20 years later. Yeah. Speaker 2 (11:04) I mean, there has to be Speaker 1 (11:06) reinvention or something Speaker 2 (11:07) of sizzle, like you said, throughout time. Otherwise it does become stale. Let me, let me, stay here, but switch gears slightly. I want to talk about stress, but I want to talk about it in multitudes of ways. Moving especially is one of the most stressful events that anybody goes through in life. Yep. Especially if you have a lot of stuff and especially if you're moving long distance, it's very difficult to pack things, move things, things get lost, things get broke. You don't know how to do this. You want to make sure everybody goes. in one direction. And it's really everybody going in a thousand directions. Then you get a moving company over who reality, let's face it, most of the time breaks shit or doesn't handle things with care. And so on your end, how stressful is it to manage all of this? Because I know that you're going to get people yelling and complaining at you. You're going to get workers saying, oh, they're saying this and we did this. And how do you. How do you deal with that amount of stress and how hard was it in the beginning in comparison to as you've gotten older? And then obviously the business has grown, so I know there's going to be more problems. Speaker 1 (12:18) Exactly. So first of all, you're absolutely right. I think moving has been shown as number three next to death and divorce as the most stressful time in somebody's life. And usually if there's a death or divorce, there's also a move involved. So it's Speaker 2 (12:27) a Speaker 1 (12:27) very stressful time. And you think about somebody's home, it's their most sacred space, and you're letting a complete set of strangers come into your home. handle all your personal belongings, pack them up, load them in a truck, hopefully not break anything, you know, hopefully not smell terrible and, you know, take the items and hopefully not steal anything, God forbid, and then take those items to a completely new location. And so they're disoriented, they're disrupted. And so the emotional state is high. And then, you know, we can't be perfect. Stuff does get broken. We do show up late. I mean, for all the best intentions and training and systems we can put in place, things can go sideways. And so... I have taken it less personally more recently, but it's hard for me to, you know, sort of disconnect the emotional connection because I'm so passionate about and know how hard we're working in the background trying to create. a positive experience for our team members, our clients, our franchise owners. And when it's obvious that we dropped the ball in some case, in some form or fashion, of course, I take it personally and feel like, well, what did we, you know, how did we, how could we have done this differently? And as you said, you know, we've got a 4.9 star Google rating. We've got, you know, a 90 % net promoter score, but we're doing thousands of moves a month. So that means that there's still that 0.1%, you know, percent or, you know, that's, that's something's going wrong, whether we, did it on purpose or whether it was an accident. And so then the other piece of it is how do we recover from that negative experience? So it is stressful. We try to train compassion and empathy in our frontline employees because we try to remind them every move has a story. Every move matters. We actually created a video. We have it on YouTube called Every Move Matters where, you know, it's talking about, you know. Somebody just got diagnosed with a life changing illness