September 13, 2023 • 53 mins
This UGA grad living in Birmingham, AL went from an idea, a few goals, little cash, and a mission to build his cleaning business, Two Maids and a Mop, from ground zero to nearly 100 locations. Ron sold his company and is now on a fresh pursuit to be disruptive in the moving industry with Pink Zebra Moving, already with 10 locations and growing. During his early days as a chemist and sitting in heavy Atlanta traffic, Ron realized his calling to leave corporate America and pave a new way in the cleaning industry. You will find him transparent and vulnerable as he shares the struggles of his early journey in business and why I think he'll find success again in his new endeavor.
Please let me know your thoughts about this conversation. Enjoy Ron Holt!
Thanks...Chuck
Chuck@BullStreetMergers.com
Please let me know your thoughts about this conversation. Enjoy Ron Holt!
Thanks...Chuck
Chuck@BullStreetMergers.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Hello, this is Chuck Crimpton.Welcome to another episode of The Chuck Crimpton
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(01:49):
Thank you for tuning into another episodeof The Chuck Crumpton Show, a non
for profit podcast making a difference whereconversations are real and raw. We are
great full for your support as webuild one of the fastest growing podcasts in
the US. Please subscribe. Moreinformation can be found at the Chuck Crumpton
Show dot com. Thank you forlistening. Here's Chuck, Thank you Meggan,
(02:13):
and welcome to another Chuck Crumpton Show. This is going to be a
lot of fun. I love business, and I believe that small businesses in
America two to two hundred employees orso is an engine that drives our world
economy. The messages you hear fromThe Chuck Crumpton Show are real world business
(02:36):
perspectives. I've been incredibly blessed tohave built and sold two of my own
companies, both that started in thetool shed of my garage. As a
matter of fact, this podcast threeyears ago also started in multiple shed.
Where conversations are real and raw.I am a practitioner of business. This
(02:59):
is not a conversation about business theory. At bull Street Mergers, we help
business owners build and sell remarkable companies. If we can help you, please
reach out to us at bull StreetMergers dot com. Okay, let's get
after this. My guest today isRon Holt. Ron is a founder of
(03:21):
Pink Zebra Moving. I love thattitle. I love that name of your
company, and their motto is theworld's first Happy Moving Company. His company
aims to disrupt the local moving industryby providing a better, more positive customer
experience, from surprise mills prior tomove day to fund antics at unexpected times,
(03:46):
Pink Zebra Moving wants to make movingfun for its customers. Currently,
the company currently has ten markets andthey plan to open many more in the
next five years. Prior to thisbusiness and we'll unpack both in our conversation
today, Ron built two maids anda mop from one single location into nearly
(04:11):
one hundred locations around the country beforeexiting to focus his efforts on Pink Zebra
Moving. So with that as ourbackground, Ron Holt, Welcome to the
Chuck Crumpton Show. Dog. I'mso glad to be here, honored to
have the conversation. I'm sure,everybody's excited to talk about dirty toilets and
homes that need to be moved today. Well, listen, my friend,
(04:34):
I've got a feeling it's going tobe a great conversation. We were connecting
a little bit before we came onthe show. Of course, I'm in
beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. You'refrom the southeast. You and your wife
live in Birmingham, Alabama, whichis also a beautiful city, and you
(04:56):
have to be riding high on theGeorgia Bulldogs. Man looks so good.
Is there three peat that's coming?I sure hope. So you know,
I don't want to be too greedythough, because it was a long dry
spell prior to those two championships,So I'm going to take what i can
get at this point. But yeah, of course I live in like Birmingham,
where it's either all burned or Alabamacraziness. So it's it's been a
(05:18):
good run. Well, something tellsme you guys have taken ownership of one
of those teams in Alabama until mywife, we will get into local politics,
but you guys have a heck ofa program and a lot of respect
for your Yeah. Well, I'ma big fan. Hopefully we keep it
(05:41):
going. Yeah, there you go. I think everybody I've ever met from
uga or just darned good people,you know, just good. Yeah,
well I think so. I mean, I've heard a few people complaining about
you know, grown men barking.You know, outside of that, we're
pretty good people. They go,well, we're gonna just unpack, uh,
(06:03):
you know, the tremendous success youhad with two maids and a mop,
And then I really want to unpackwhat you're doing with Pink Zebra moving.
Yeah, and we'll talk. We'lltalk some personal we'll talk some business
stuff. My first question I typicallyasked my guest, you know a lot
of accolades, a lot of success. I want to I want to pull
(06:25):
you into some of those, uh, some of those points that I want
to make in the conversation. Buttell us right off the batman, who
is the real Ron Holt, sothat that person has changed involved over my
adult lifetime. If you would havetalked to me twenty just over twenty years
ago, I would have told youI'm the next word Buffett. I'm gonna,
(06:48):
you know, do all these great, big, huge global things and
have all sorts of dollars in thebank and try to be as humble as
possible, like you know, goodold Buffett is. As I've aged and
more importantly become a father of twoawesome little kids, and they've changed everything,
you know, and so I loveeverything about them, love being a
(07:09):
part of their lives. And youknow, now, I want to be
a great entrepreneur. I'm still anentrepreneur at Hart and I'm still chasing Buffett.
But my most important going to liveto be a great dad right now
and all the other things that comealongside of that. It's kind of gravy
at this point. Yeah, that'scool, man. Well, a lot
of business success I appreciate. Youknow. We hear this work life balanced
(07:33):
discussion all the time, right,I'm not sure if that's valid. I
get it right, that we needto keep things in perspective. What does
that look like for you? SoI've got an interesting, I think interesting
perspective on that. I tell thisto our franchise owners all the time,
both here and back at Two Maids, and so I believe that there's no
(07:57):
such things that I know. That'skind of a radical whole way to think
of it. If you love whatyou do nothing. And you've probably heard
this. Buffet says this, evenlike if you love what you're doing,
he calls it your tap tap danceto work. I just call it having
fun, you know, like whatI'm doing right now telling my story,
talking about all the things that Iwent through to sacrifice to get to a
(08:18):
you know, multimillion dollar business towhat I'm doing again now with Pink Zebra
Moving. It's enjoyable. It's itbrings joy to me. It energizes me.
It doesn't drain me like a job. If you told me to go
out and you know, work inthe yard, yeah, you know,
you know, it's not something Ireally want to do. That's work.
(08:39):
And so man, every day That'sone of the reasons I sold to me
is I'll tell you that story.As we talked today, I found myself
somewhat being drained towards the end ofthe day, and that was a red
flag for me because I've always believedthat if you love what you do,
then you're going to pour a lotof effort. And it's been love into
(09:01):
that vocation. Great things are goingto happen, maybe not every day,
maybe not even quickly, but they'llhappen, you know, And so work
life balance is important. Like Iwant to be a great dad, I
don't want to be a great husband. I want to watch the Georgia Bulldogs
on Saturday, you know. Butat the same time, nothing about what
I do ever feels like work,you know, And whether I'm whether you're
an entrepreneur or not, doesn't.You don't have to be an entrepreneur to
(09:24):
love what you do, you know. That's what I've chosen, that's the
path that's worked for me. Butlove what you do, great things are
going to happen. You're never gonnafeel drained, You're always gonna want to
go back to work. Like there'sit's been twenty years since I've hated Monday,
Morgan, you know. So thatto me is that's that's worked life
balance in a weird way. Yeah, that's good man. I like that.
Dave Ramsey, one of my heroesin the in the financial space,
(09:48):
says, you know, find somethingthat you love to do and figure out
how to get paid for it,right, and it it sounds like you've
got You've got the perf essional andthe personal. Not every day is different.
Some days are better than others,right, for all of us.
But it sounds like you've got agood, good handle all that. I
like crazy stuff like the challenge ofdisrupting an industry, the challenge of taking
(10:13):
an idea that you just thought about, you know, by yourself one day,
and building that into a national brandwith locations across the country. That's
a huge mountain decline. Right.You don't just do that, even with
money. You don't do that quickly. That challenge is fun to me.
I love it. I love allthe problems that come from that, all
the hysteria, all the stress andinterdests me, you know, And so
(10:37):
that's that's that's where I find joy. Yeah, that's cool, man,
that's very cool. I'm curious Andas I warned you right when we kind
of got started, I'm big intothe real and the raw, very vulnerable
approach just to life and the business. And I think it's a foundation of
(10:58):
cornerstone of leadership. But was therea particular point that you had that you
know, either as an entrepreneur,as a CEO, or as a dad
or husband, did you have thataha moment that you had to pivot in
your life? Oh yeah, Ican tell you this, So you know,
(11:18):
I was like everybody and that goesto Georgia got a job in Atlanta.
So I was a young twenty somethingworking in Atlanta. And if you've
ever lived or worked in Atlanta,you know traffic stinks. And so I
was making that daily commute and everyday I would look to the left and
the right of man, I seeall these other cars, and everybody was
just sort of staring and you know, doing their thing and making money and
(11:41):
doing it all over again the nextday. And you know, I come
from a blue collar family. Mymom and dad both worked their entire life
and continued to this day. Mymom and so work wasn't something I was
afraid of. I knew it well, but it felt so empty. And
so there was this moment I wasliterally on Interstate eighty five eighty five,
(12:03):
headed to the office, and Ilooked to my life. I looked to
my right like I have been doing, and I saw these empty sort of
just glares like I was having,and I had this like pit in my
stomach, and I said, somethis can't be the rest of my life.
Like at that point of my life, I had done very well in
the career. I was still inmy mid twenties, but I was able
(12:24):
to travel the world. In thejob I was in. I was managing
PhDs and chimal congineers and making prettygood money, you know, and high
life, you know, should havebeen at least, but that something that
was missing, that pit in mystomach that I felt. I was like,
man if I double my salary ortriple my salary, and it's still
(12:46):
here, that same feeling. Twentyyears from now, I'm going to look
back and reflect on this moment andgo, why didn't I try something else?
And so I didn't know anything aboutan entrepreneurship. I didn't know what
business ownership meant. That wasn't partof my life or upbringing. And so
this true story that day, Ithis is back when they had bookstores.
You could go visit bookstores by thesethings, you know, a couple books.
(13:09):
And so during my lunch break,I drove to the Merriam Mall and
I went to the bookstore just pickedout a business book because it seemed interesting.
It happened to be my guy werein Buffett, and just started devouring
everything about Buffett in his life,both professional and personal life. And I
(13:31):
just became motivated and inspired by thatand thought that I could do the same
thing. And I couldn't quit.I mean, I still had a whole
lot of work in front of meto get to a place where I could
financially do something besides work for thisparticular place, which is a great place
to work. Nothing wrong with theorganization. But over the next several years,
I worked my way into a placewhere I was able to take the
(13:54):
plunge and start a business. Itwas a cleaning business of all things.
You know. Yeah, I couldstill see myself on that interstate right now,
and how I felt that morning,and how I made sure that I
was going to do something to runaway from that feeling. Wow. I
love that, Ron, I reallydo. I had had a guest on
(14:15):
I think in season two, andyou were a chemist, which is interesting.
You went from being a chemist tostarting a you know, your your
business Two maids and a mob,right. I had a young lady again
I think in season two that hadbeen a chemist and decided to pursue her
(14:37):
passion and movies and you know,podcast and just a sort of the entertainment
industry. And she equated it tojumping off of a burning tower, which
you know, leaving the world ofbeing a chemist to making movies. You
almost can't connect the dots, right, yeah, you know, I my
(15:01):
corporate America was a little bit differentthan most people's version of corporate ameror called
it was very technical, you know. There there wasn't a lot of boardrooms
and white collars and stuff like that, you know. So, but what
I what I didn't like was therewas a lot of bureaucracy. You know,
there was a lot of decisions thatweren't always, in my opinion,
the best decisions for the business,but they were the best decisions for those
(15:24):
people that made those decisions. Andso I just didn't understand that. It
kind of blew my mind that peopledidn't really want to just take over the
world and everything they did, youknow. And so I said, if
I'm not going to be able tofit in to corporate America, then I'm
going to have to, you know, do it my way. And so
that's entrepreneurship was the easiest way todo that. And you know, at
the time, I didn't necessarily havethe capital to pull off these big ideas
(15:48):
and goals that I had, andso I kind of funneled my way to
home services. Because of that WhatI didn't know until later was that I
stumbled into what still remains, inmy opinion, the best industry there is,
Like home services are still it's justa strong demand from a consumer base,
and you know, a fragmented marketplacefrom carpet cleaners to moving companies to
(16:12):
cleaning companies and so on. There'svery few other industries that you can think
of where there's growing demand field orserved by like again, mom and pop,
fragmented marketplace. And so yeah,that's that's what led me to starting
a cleaning business, of all things. I didn't know how to clean a
(16:33):
house. I still remember telling mymother and father one that I was starting
the business, which they were like, wait a minute, we paid for
your school, what are you doing? And then two I was gonna you
know, they didn't they knew Ididn't know how to clean a house.
I never cleaned my room before,and so it was a little bizarre early
on. I love the idea ofrecording revenue. I love the idea that
was absolutely again like a trade basedbusiness. And so a lot of people
(16:56):
who owned cleaning businesses even to thisday, were just cleaning business people.
You know, they they were goodat cleaning and turned themselves into business owners.
And I just felt like there wasgoing to be an opportunity to do
something to really disrupt this industry.I didn't know what the disruption was going
to be, but I felt likethere was going to be an opportunity there
and just you know, save somemoney to have head first into it and
(17:18):
open to cleaning business eventually, andlater on April Fool's Day of all days
in two thousand and three, Wow, Wow, take us take us on
that journey for a moment. Ronand I picture I came. I came
out of a Fortune fifteen company latenineties to start my first business. And
(17:44):
you know, it was funny.I remember leaving I had covered parking downtown
Charlotte, overlooking the Panther Stadium.Life was good, you know, and
I went to the tool shed,you know, and said, okay,
let's create something. And I rememberthat first day vividly, you know,
over twenty five years ago. Now, the loneliness, the excitement, all
(18:08):
the emotion kind of rolled up intointo one. But it's a little bit
scary leaving that corporate job where youget paid every other Friday, and you
know, you travel the world likeyou say that first day, just walk
us through the essence of leaving thatcorporate job as a chemist and then cleaning
(18:34):
that first house that day. SoI had what I thought was a really
strong business plan, you know.It was cash flow forecasting out five years,
all these you know, strategic movesat certain revenue milestones. Like I
had a real strong plan in frontof me. And then the first day
happened. And so I had hiredpeople. So I had hired people prior
(18:56):
to this, Like, even thoughI was in my twenties, I,
like I said, had managed thisdepartments at this laboratory. And the employees
that worked for me were forty fiftyyear old men who were highly educated,
you know, and then the twentysomething you know managing them. Ironically,
they didn't want anything to do inmanagement. They just wanted to do the
work, you know, and soI was like, well, do the
(19:17):
management stuff. And so that's kindof how I found my way into that
role. So I kind of thoughtI knew it all, like, hey,
I'm pretty good at this, youknow, people seem to like my
leadership and so on. And soI hired these housekeepers and said, let's
go. You know, here's howyou do it, see Monday. And
so Monday arrived and only I'd hiredtwo people because it's two maids in a
(19:41):
mop. You just need two people, right, Well one only showed up,
so it was one maiden in amop, and so you know,
I'm like whatever, I'll just doit. Like this is kind of weird
because I've never hired somebody before itthat didn't show it for their first day,
but maybe that's just bad luck.And so I said, I'll go
do it. We had two homesto clean that day. They were both
complete nightmares for me because I didn'tknow what to do. I had not
(20:02):
really thought through that part, andso I had to sort of winged and
I'm sure to disappoint the customers thatwe had at the time. And from
that day forward, I said,Okay, I gotta learn from this because
everything I had planned on my firstday was promotion, you know, like
I was going to be grassroots.I was going to be talking to real
estate agents. I was going togo out and even reach out to other
(20:26):
home service companies that were similar inwhat you know, we could maybe piggyback
off one another and generate revenue.And had all these ideas, and I
found myself cleaning homes all day,and so I said, this isn't going
to work. I can't be thepractitioner every single day. And so I
pulled myself out of the solution andsaid, that's it. And so it
(20:47):
literally was the first and last daythat ever cleaned the house. And I'm
sure customers were thankful for that,but I appreciate the vulnerability on that.
Man. It's I guess a humblebeginning. Well, yeah, it gets
even crazier. So the next twoyears I proceeded to lose money every single
(21:11):
day, just bled read ink,you know. And that was not just
two years. It was like ahard two years. Because it was a
cleaning company on the Gulf Coast toFlorida, and so on the weekends we
would clean these, you know,condos and homes for all the tourists to
come in and out of town.On the Monday through Friday, during the
daytime, we were cleaning homes inthe morning time before eight o'clock, in
(21:33):
other words, we would clean upoffices and then after five o'clock we would
continue cleaning other offices around town.And so it was while I wasn't picking
up brooms. It was a verytime consuming endeavor and then you do all
that and and the day the rewardyou get is read inc It's tough,
you know, and so vision tome, that's a were probably an overused
(21:56):
word in business nowadays, but itwas really what fuelled me. It's what
made me think that this was allworth it. Because today I lose money
by working ten hours, but todayas a step towards the bigger goal,
which for me at the time wasto scale the brand across the country.
So I knew the step one wasto build a profitable, scalable business model.
(22:17):
And everything I did was experimentation,and at some point I figured that
my failures returning to successes, andeventually did. It took me two years
to make money, but I finallymade some money, and from that point
far where we started growing and openingadditional locations across the southeast. Wow,
you know, Ron, this thoughtjust occurred to me as you're telling that
(22:38):
story. I don't think i've sharedthis publicly, so bear with me if
you would. My first job outof college, I was fortunate and blessed
not to have a college debt.My parents took care of that, but
you know, first job, thevery low salary, didn't have any money
(23:00):
trying to buy a car, youknow, furnish an apartment, all that
kind of stuff. And my firstjob out of college was my salary was
twelve thousand dollars a year, whichis really hard to make a car pavement
and you know, put food onthe table and buy an occasional cold beer.
So I picked up a second job, and my first job was in
(23:22):
technology right right out of school.It was a great company, just just
a low base salary, and soto pick up extra money for my car,
pavement or beer or whatever, Iwent out and linked up with the
janitorial service and I would at nightclean office buildings and it was fine.
(23:45):
But during the day from seven toseven, I had a suit I was
required by the company. And thenat you know six or six thirty,
I take off the suit, puton my shorts, grab my rag in
my you know, in my shortsand the back pocket and go clean these
office buildings. And that was prettyhumbling. Actually. The funny, the
(24:07):
one funny story to that is oneof the companies that I was calling on
in my technology job, you know, sort of my real job during the
day I had to go clean thatoffice. And it was late eight nine
o'clock at night, and I wasactually in the VP's office, the office
i'd been in a few days earlier. And he comes back in the building,
(24:32):
true story, and I sort oflike hid behind the door, like
he's going to be really confused toknow me in my technology suit versus you
know, having a dust pan inmy hand, you know. So that
the only time it ever happened.But and I haven't thought about that story,
(24:52):
and gosh, thirty five years,but you just reminded me of you
know, how you do what youdo right, when you start a business,
you do what you do to makeit work, that's right. Yeah,
you do it because you believe inwhat you're doing. You know there's
a purpose behind it. And Ithink, whether you're cleaning homes or you
know, technology or whatever it mightbe, work as to matter, you
know. So if you work matters, then you'll keep doing it. So
(25:15):
that's that's why we do those things. Yeah, very cool man, Very
cool. Well, I've heard alittle bit of your story in the past,
a couple of conversations that you've hadthat I really enjoyed. One of
the points that I One of mytakeaways in a previous conversation that you had
was you personally bankrolled, you're acompany, two mates and a mop.
(25:38):
How difficult was that? And wasit? Was it a shoe string operation?
Accordant what you call a shoe string? Probably in today's world it would
be a shoe string. But Isaved over the course of about seven years
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.I numbers seemed appropriate to me, you
(26:02):
know, So there was a littlebit of science behind it, but mostly
it sounded like one hundred and fiftymillion dollars to twenty four year old with
no money, you know. Andso I put this plan together in my
head and I said, let's go. And then a few weeks later I
looked at I even set up thissavings account, separate savings account, and
that was where all this money wasgoing to end up. Well, two
(26:26):
three weeks later passed and it wasstill zero dollars, and I'm like,
hmm, that's a long way fromone hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I'll
never get there. And I startedfeeling like I was losing like this,
like despair kind of came over me. So about that time, I'm a
huge reader, like super nerd whenit comes to especially business books, and
so I had read this book onhabits. And there's a bit of a
(26:48):
bunch since then. Actually that eventake it a little bit farther, but
basically it said, hey, ifyou've got this big goal, figure out
what the plan is to get there, create daily, weekly habits to slowly,
but you know, surely, walkyour way towards that bigger goal.
Celebrate the little victories along the way, and then you know that way,
(27:10):
each little victory is more, eachlittle goal is more digestible than this huge
goal, and then at some pointyou'll look backwards and you'll be there,
you know. And so I'm like, oh, that sounds pretty easy.
I can do that, right,you know. And so that's what I
did. And so I put thisplan together where I had to save a
few hundred dollars a week and ifI could, you know, find this
(27:33):
extra you know, three or fourhundred dollars a week, then I would
deposit that into my savings account orFriday afternoons and then I would go celebrate
the victory. And so sometimes Ihit that, most of times I did,
but my entire week. My sevenday work week, or not work
we counted a week was a missionwhere I would drop off this money on
(27:55):
Friday afternoons and so I could.Part of that was just from good old
saving, you know. I mademoney from job. Whatever's left over went
to the account. That wasn't enough, and so I had to get other
jobs like you did. I hadto get these other jobs on nights and
weekends. I even started little smallbusinesses, my kind of craziest business that
(28:18):
seemed really ridiculous at the time.It turned out to be a profitable enterprise
for me. I was playing golfwith some friends one day and said,
hey, there's opportunities here on thisscorecard. If you know play golf,
you get the eighteen whole scorecard.And so I went to the golf pro
afterwards and I said, hey,if I give you these scorecards for free,
will you take them? They so, of course I will. So
(28:41):
I said, well, I'm goingto sell ad space on there, and
that'll be how I get paid,you know, And so they said,
whatever, go to it. Theydidn't really believe me, and so I
went out and I sold ad spaceto banks and a little small sandwich shops
and whatever, attorneys and everything thatwere members out, you know, at
the course and in Atlanta at thetime, and found a printer who would
(29:02):
print the Golf Corps score card,delivered it to them a few dollars,
started going to all these other areagolf courses around Atlanta, and rolled some
of my college buddies to be mysalespeople, and all of a sudden,
you know, we had this likeprinting business for golf courses. Love it,
man, I love it. Yeah, like just the hustle, you
know, trying to save a fewdollars. And so every single week I
(29:22):
would drop off this money, andI had these like various trophies I would
give myself. If I just metthe goal, then I would go have
a coal beer with a buddy,which doesn't seem like a huge victory for
a lot of people. But ifI didn't hit my goal, there was
no beer for me, you know, because I needed to save that dollar.
If I were to really trounce thegoal, then I would go reward
myself with a round of golf thatweekend. I was not married or kids
(29:45):
then, you know, so golfingwas on the table then. Yeah,
and then you know, there werebigger things along the way, but slowly
but surely I found myself, youknow, racing closer and closer to the
top, and so I finally gotto a place where I eventually hit it.
You know, six seven years later, I saved one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars all from just that slowgrind. You know, Yeah, it
(30:07):
was. It's awesome. At thetime, it just felt like, well,
this is what you do. Youknow, now, looking back on
it, it does sound a lotsexier and romantic than it was at the
time. Yeah, for sure,for sure. You know, I'm curious.
I feel like, at this juncturein the conversation, I want you
(30:27):
to speak. We have a wehave a lot of leaders that listen to
our show, right, it's weattract a lot of CEOs, a lot
of future leaders. As I said, we were sort of in our prep
phase of this conversation. You know, I don't really want to know how
(30:48):
much money you put in the bankwhen you when you sold two maids on
the mop. We're not gonna getin the weeds of the deal. But
I'm I'm really drawn to the climb, and I love your vulnerability and what
you just describe the journey of buildingthis business and socking away money and holding
(31:11):
yourself accountable and setting those goals.Man, that's a hell of a story.
And I'm I'm I'm drawn to that. I want to ask you to
speak right to the minds and thehearts of a lot of my listeners.
And we have our show has donereally well. We've got thousands and thousands
(31:32):
and thousands of listeners all over theworld. But I work with a group
of entrepreneurs as a as a mentor. I serve on the mentor board,
and I love it because these arethese are young entrepreneurs. Some of them
are twenty five and some are sixtyfive. But they're you know, new
businesses and new ideas and innovative andcreative. And I love it. But
(31:56):
having been an entrepreneur, you certainlyhave been an entrepreneur, and you know,
now two successful businesses. It canbe very lonely, right, it
can be very lonely in the toolshed, as I like to call it.
And sometimes, you know, justgetting to the next day. I
(32:17):
know that sounds really crazy, butin the life and the mind and the
heart of an entrepreneur, sometimes gettingto the next day, the next week,
the next month is all you cando, right, I want you
to open your heart for a momentand talk to that young entrepreneur again.
(32:38):
Twenty five or sixty five, itdoesn't matter, but they've launched out on
this new endeavor, this new mission. Talk to that guy that lady right
now who is trying to figure outthey're trying to figure out their phone,
their computer. You know, we'reto park. How to get this thing
(33:00):
go on, how to call onthat first customer, how to create a
business? Talk to that person rightnow, Ron, sure, So beyond
the nuances of what you're doing,the you know, the x's, and
I was pushed that aside for aminute, this is the like have fun
dreaming first, Like, just havefun. Dream so much real life stuff
(33:24):
that goes on when you own abusiness, right, how do you pay
the bills? You know, howdo you do this or whatever? And
it can really bog you down,and sometimes it boys you down so much?
Did you forget when you did inthe first place? So dream,
you know, dream big, figureout what you want and no matter how
big it is, or even ifit's not huge, whatever, that big,
(33:45):
huge goal is, own it.You know, believe in it.
And I know that sounds very phinein the sky, but you've got to
truly believe and whatever that big goalis, and you cannot forget that you
believe in it, because once youstop believing in it, everyone else is
going to stop believing in it aswell. And so in my case,
(34:07):
the first goal for two mates ina mob was to build a national empire
of residential cleaning franchises. My secondgoal is to sort of piggyback off that.
Here at Ping Zebra Moving. Wewant to still scale the country.
We want to have locations and everymarket across this nation, but we also
want to leave behind a legacy.We want to create a whole new category
(34:30):
within the local movement industry. Andwe think, one day, like you
said earlier, we're going to beknown as the world's first happy moving company.
There's going to be those old schooldudes and then there's new school guys
that really put on a show whenyou hire a moving company. And so
we're right now the lord ranger inthat space. But we think people will
follow us, and so that's ahuge goal. Sometimes even seems crazy right
(34:52):
when you hear that, you're like, who do you think you can do
that. It doesn't matter. Rightnow, we just get to have fun
dreaming and we start believing. Onceyou believe all the other stuff's going to
come together, it really will.You can never lose that faith. If
once you lose that faith, everything'sgoing to start feeling like work. And
so when you have those moments,when you have those valleys that you're going
(35:15):
to go through, whatever it is, and I can name a hundred things
that you're going to go through whenyou hit that valley and the second valley
and the third valley and so on, you've got to be able to look
back to why you started this andstill believe that what you're doing is worth
it. And if you do that, I promise you the passion that you
have for the work that you doand the belief that you have for what
(35:37):
you're trying to build, people aregoing to want to be a part of
that, and people are going towant to put a lot of effort towards
it and bring their own passion tothe workplace. And then you've got a
team of people who believe in whatyou're trying to do, and all of
a sudden you've got momental you know, so the people that I see,
so they succeed in business versus notsucceeding. It's not necessarily one person smarter
(36:00):
than the other one. It's noteven usually money related. It's just the
people that succeed never give up.And it's easy to say that, but
you never give up. If youbelieve in something, you can only lose
by quitting in business. And soif you keep believing, you're going to
keep working and at some point somethinggood's going to happen. Yeah. That's
beautiful, man, that's beautiful.Thank you. Yeah, and do well.
(36:24):
I think it's a message that leadersand particularly entrepreneurs need to know because
to you and you said it,I can't add to what you just said.
You will have those dark days,right, We're you know, if
if you leave the cave and goout and kill something and you try to
drag it home, you're going tohave good days and bad days. And
(36:47):
we have to be sustainable in ourdreams and our goals and our mission,
right, absolutely, yeah, becausethey're coming. You know, you're not
going to avoid those those moments.You're gonna make bad decisions, even you're
gonna have bad luck. Yeah,yes, you are. You know,
so now what you know what makesyou get up? And we want to
keep fighting. Everybody fights for areason, and the one that wants to
(37:12):
fight the hardest usually wins, youknow. And so the way I fight
the hardest is just believing you.I have more passion for this brand than
anybody ever, will you know,even though we're going to bring in a
bunch of franchise ease, our homeoffice is going to continue to grow,
We're gonna hire great movers across thecountry. No one's ever going to believe
more in this brand than me.Yeah, that's awesome, man. Well,
(37:34):
as a as a quick sidebar,I wish i'd have met you six
months ago because we lost some ofour stuff in a in a recent move,
and I wish you guys we're herein Charleston, but we're getting close.
Well okay, good, yeah,Well you just let me know.
Man, hopefully we're we're staying putfor a while, but we can definitely
(37:54):
give you some business here in thisthriving market the city. I do want
to I want to pivot for justa moment with two maids and a mop,
with one question that's near and dearto my heart, and then I
want to ask you quickly about justkind of franchising because you've worked through those
(38:17):
battles, and then I want tohear some good stories man with with pink
Zebra moving. So my question,and this is again near and dear to
me having sold two of my owncompanies, not being emotionally attached to the
first one, but very emotionally attachedto the to the second one that I
(38:39):
sold three years ago. Walk methrough, walk us through. You know,
you built two maids in a mopfrom zero to almost a hundred locations.
And we again we won't get intothe term sheet and the offers and
the l os and any of thatinto the weeds, but capture for us
(39:02):
the emotion of that moment, theday of clothes. Yeah, you know,
it's a I I dreamed about thatday as a you know, a
young entrepreneur and stall boats and vacations, you know. But when that day
(39:22):
finally happened, there was a lotof due diligence that led up to it.
And so in the moment of thedue diligence, it's just work.
You know. You're just answering thisquestion and providing this piece of data and
so on, and you kind offorget that at the end of that due
diligence period, it's over. You'vesold the business. And so you know,
I sold the business, and thatparticular day was very weirdly emotional for
(39:46):
me. There was certainly some joy, because you know, a life of
work, you know, had sometangible value connected to it. But it
was my children for a long timesaid they had two siblings. They had
their actual sibling and then two maidsin a mob. That's who I identified
(40:07):
as. I mean, I wasthe two maids of a mop guy.
Forever. If you saw me atan industry conference, I was the two
maids of a mop guy. We'rein the pink jacket, you know.
So when you sell a business that'sgone, you know, you have to
move forward in a different direction.And that isn't along you know, the
business isn't a member of my familyanymore. So there was it's I don't
(40:29):
I'm you know, my kids areyoung, so I don't know what the
experience is when a child, youknow, moves off to college. But
I guess it sort of had thatfeeling for me a little bit. But
this in this case, I couldn'tthey couldn't come back home. You know,
I wouldn't go see them on campus. They it was gone forever,
so you know, I wanted tolie. I was very emotional that day.
I went back and forth almost throughoutthe day to jubilation to you know,
(40:52):
almost tears, but you know,at the same time, it was
it was something that I felt wasthe right time, you know, I
was what I what I learned aboutmyself was that startup life, as crazy
as it sounds, startup life wasmore fun than CEO life. And I
recognized that because I loved both worlds. I had to go from small business
(41:14):
owner who cleaned a home every nowand then too, you know, president
of a regional business to a CEOof a national business. And you know,
when you go through all those differentiterations, you have to change how
you lead and make decisions. Andwhen I look back on all of that
(41:35):
journey, it was pretty clear tome that my the happiest moments of my
life when we were when we werein the early stages and it was us
against the world. So that's that'swhy I sold the business, and that's
why I went right back head firstinto another business right here in the home,
service of Space with pig zebra movingand it's when I'm doing today and
it's it's it feels like the olddays again. Oh that's good man.
I can I have the privilege ofseeing you face to face right, you
(42:00):
know, as we're doing this,uh, this conversation. I see the
zeal in your eyes. The passionis very evident, man, and I
applaud that. I appreciate it.Yeah, I mean it's again, it's
easy to It's easy to have passionwhen you believe it's something, So it's
not artificial. You don't you don'thave to, Like if we talk tomorrow,
(42:22):
hopefully you would feel the same way, because what I do is that
important to me. Yeah, that'svery cool. I do want to ask
you very quickly, and I feellike we could have a whole conversation on
franchising. A lot of us reallydon't understand. You know, I never
did that in my two companies.A lot of us don't understand franchising.
(42:45):
I've heard horror stories, I've heardgreat success stories. But give us,
give us a twenty thousand foot flyover of franchising. Do do we do
it? Do we consider it?Do we run from it? And capsulate
(43:06):
you? There are I call thisthere are two different types of business owners
in this world. There are theentrepreneurs. Really that's me, and then
there's franchise owners. And you couldprobably make a case for economy or something
like that for this, for thesake of this conversation, franchise owners and
entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are kind of okaywith startup pains. They are okay with
(43:30):
the struggle. They're okay being bythemselves. They're okay with a little bit
of their future being a mystery andan unknown that's weirdly fun to them.
Franchise ease want to own their daytoo. They want to have financial freedom,
they want to have flexibility in theirday and schedules, and they want
to be able to build value insomething that can return money back to their
(43:53):
family at some point. But theydon't necessarily like the idea of going through
those startup pains and knowing exactly whatthe future holes or how to do something,
you know, like how to tryto figure this out. They want
somebody else to kind of tell themto do that. Now, to do
that means you gotta pay up,you know, you gotta pay for that
coaching, You gotta pay for thosesystems and processes. That's where franchising comes
(44:15):
into play. That's who we areas a franchise or at the end of
the day, franchise a great franchiseor is a great teacher, a great
training and support mechanism. And that'swhat we do. We teach people how
to get to grand opening. Weset them up with strong vendors, we
set them up with tools, technology, and then our own internal team provides
(44:37):
business coaching and direction and we doeverything from making sure you're upholding the brand
standards, to overseeing you know yourmarketing spend and strategy, to helping you
learn how to move that. Thisindustry is very blue collar and so most
of our franchisees are a white collarand they don't know the difference between this
(45:00):
dolly and that dolly. And sowe've got people here internally that teach people
that. And at the end ofthe day, when it's all said and
done, that's what our job is. To make life easier for you to
be, to make your business moreefficient. And then over time, you
know, we all went, yourbusiness grows, you make money, and
so do we Yeah, that's good. Since and again we've heard we've heard
(45:22):
great success stories. I know you, and I wish we'd had time to
unpack your incredible conversation with Fred deLuca. That was incredible as I heard
it. I would I'd love tojust camp out there for a while,
but time fails us. Right,you took the story. Oh, I
would love to hear that story.I'd love for my audience the bottom line.
(45:45):
And Ron, we've got to doa second conversation because I've got I've
got eighteen questions just on franchising.But you know, you took two maids
in a mop from you know,one to nearly one hundred location. You're
taking Pink Zebra Moving. You're nowin ten markets, you're going to You're
(46:05):
gonna explode all over the Southeast andprobably the country. I see it,
man, I just my crystal ballis shiny and clear today, and I
see that you're going to have greatsuccess with it. Give us a fun
story. Man. You guys areyou're disrupting the moving industry? Yeah,
so we think the moving industry isbroken. You know, we think customers
(46:30):
need moving services. They'll spend alot of money for those moving services.
But we also think that almost everythingabout the consumer experience is broken, from
the broken and damaged items people experience, to the scuffed walls, to the
route sort of unprofessional behavior by moviesmovers, and then the big one,
(46:50):
of course, pricing is kind ofcrazy. Sometimes what you're estimate says is
three or four times more than whatit actually costs at the end, and
so all of that is to setsome cases even fraudulent. At the end
of the day, nobody wants topay a lot of money for something they
don't enjoy, and so that's whatmoving is. So I experienced that personally.
My mother in law locally here inBirmingham hired a move a company and
(47:14):
all the things I just talked abouthappened to her. And I started looking
within the industry to see if thatwas happening in other markets across this country,
and of course it was, andit surprised me in a good way
because I said, hey, youknow, here's an opportunity. It's two
twenty one at the time. Whatother industry can you think of that you
can disrupt by just doing things thegood old fashioned way. You know,
(47:36):
we didn't codify our way to thetop. We're just you know, going
to offer a better service. Andso when I saw that there was a
broken consumer experience model or issue.Then I said, well, what can
we do to attack that? Howdo we make the experience more positive?
So I started falling in love withthis idea of customer experience. The term
basically means a proactive approach to leadingcustomer down a journey so that when it's
(48:00):
all said and done, they feelgood about their investment or purchase or whatever.
And so I didn't feel like movingcompanies really thought of their customers in
that way. You know, weshow up with trucks and strong dudes and
we worked, you know, thatwas the journey. And so I said,
what if we were to actually makethis theater, What if we were
to put on a show? Whatif we were actually made moving fun for
(48:22):
our customers? You know, Ilove challenges, and so I created a
tagline, a slogan for our business, our brand called we make Moving Fun
and said, let's figure out waysto make moving fun. And so,
before, during, and after amove, our consumers literally get a show.
You know from you mentioned earlier andour intro of the free food offer.
(48:44):
It's kind of what we're known for, by the most part nowadays,
with a lot of other cool things. But every time we moved someone the
day before the night before the move, we provide them a free mill.
It's totally you know, on us, it's unexpected to make surprise. They
love it. You know, peoplesometimes have cried human in the past that
yeah, we provide surprise boxes fullof goodies and chocolates and candies and personalized
(49:08):
gifts. You know. In somecases, if you're a Georgia Bulldog fan
living in Charleston, then we're goingto find a Georgia Bulldog couzy to put
in there and say, go dogs. We do push ups to start the
day, we run in place throughoutthe day. We play music throughout the
house. I mean, we've gota mascot called Zeke ze Zebra. Of
course he comes out when there's childreninvolved, we put on a show.
(49:31):
And at the end of the daywhen we do, when our trucks lead,
we want customers to say, man, they did make moving fun.
And so that's that's our challenge toourselves. Our franchise Ease have accepted that
challenge. We're in ten markets today, like you said, we actually are
going to be opening in Boston verysoon. So we're gonna get outside of
the Southeast for the first time,and we've got a lot of other opportunity.
(49:52):
We're essentially available coast to coast inevery major market, and you know,
we can't wait to do it allover again. You know, we've
already been down this road once andwe know how to be a great franchise,
or we've proved that once with anotherbrand, so we're about to do
it again. And it's it's sofun and exciting. So man, that
is so cool. That is socool. Well again, I wish I
(50:15):
would have We sold our last houseback in December last year, and you
know, in this crazy market,had to move into temporary housing until we
secured the new house. And Iwish we'd have known you. So come
to Charleston, man, just cometo Charleston. Well, we'll be there
shortly. We're not quite there yet. We're around you, we're north and
(50:37):
south of you. We're not quitethere yet. Okay, sounds good,
Ron Holt, Man, this conversationhas fired me up, right, it's
invigorated me. On we're doing thisconversation on a Tuesday afternoon, but you
fired me up. It's it's agreat story. Both of your stories in
(51:00):
building your two companies, and theallegiance and the diligence, the attention that
you give to your family on topof just being a hell of a nice
guy. Man. I applaud yoursuccess and you know, we'll stand on
the side the sidelines as cheerleaders tomake sure that this new endeavor Ping Zibra
(51:25):
movement is just going to rocket togreat success. How can we follow you?
How can we point people to yourwebsite? Your LinkedIn? What's the
best way to track you out?Yeah, very visible on LinkedIn and easy
to find. I'm have a twosyllable name work, you know, so
yeah, look find me there andI guarantee I'll connect with you and engage
(51:47):
and you know, we'll talk.I love helping people. I've helped several
people bring ideas to life, youknow, over the last few years,
and so it's a passion project forme. Of course, if you're interested
in our franchise opportunity, again,we're available at most markets across this country
right now Ping Zebra Moving franchise dotcom. You'll learn about the investment expectations,
(52:10):
what your financial expectations even will be, what markets are available. You'll
go a little bit deeper dive intowhat we do on the consumer experience side,
and then of course what we doto help you get open and keep
you open. So Ping Zebra MovingFranchise dot Com. You can learn as
much about us as you can possiblylearn, and then that will eventually lead
to a conversation hopefully with me.You know, we can talk about the
(52:31):
franchise opportunity. That's awesome, man. Well, we will definitely continue to
follow you and again just applaud yoursuccess. Ron Holt, thank you for
being on the Chuck Crumpton Show.It's a pleasure, man, and I've
got to have you back. Ididn't get to ten percent of my question,
(52:52):
so carve out sometime in the nearfuture and let's just continue to unpack
this. Absolutely, I'll do it. It's a date. Yeah, that's
awesome man. Well, this hasbeen a great episode with Ron Holt.
This is Chuck Crumpton. Thank youfor listening to another Chuck Crumpton show where
(53:13):
life is real and raw and conversationsare great and encouraging. Ron Holt,
thank you for sharing a piece ofyour heart and I hope you have a
great week. I make you see. Yeah, something
Hello, this is Chuck Crimpton.Welcome to another episode of The Chuck Crimpton
Show. So good to have youon this beautiful afternoon. I have three
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(00:36):
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(01:00):
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Thank you for tuning into another episodeof The Chuck Crumpton Show, a non
for profit podcast making a difference whereconversations are real and raw. We are
great full for your support as webuild one of the fastest growing podcasts in
the US. Please subscribe. Moreinformation can be found at the Chuck Crumpton
Show dot com. Thank you forlistening. Here's Chuck, Thank you Meggan,
(02:13):
and welcome to another Chuck Crumpton Show. This is going to be a
lot of fun. I love business, and I believe that small businesses in
America two to two hundred employees orso is an engine that drives our world
economy. The messages you hear fromThe Chuck Crumpton Show are real world business
(02:36):
perspectives. I've been incredibly blessed tohave built and sold two of my own
companies, both that started in thetool shed of my garage. As a
matter of fact, this podcast threeyears ago also started in multiple shed.
Where conversations are real and raw.I am a practitioner of business. This
(02:59):
is not a conversation about business theory. At bull Street Mergers, we help
business owners build and sell remarkable companies. If we can help you, please
reach out to us at bull StreetMergers dot com. Okay, let's get
after this. My guest today isRon Holt. Ron is a founder of
(03:21):
Pink Zebra Moving. I love thattitle. I love that name of your
company, and their motto is theworld's first Happy Moving Company. His company
aims to disrupt the local moving industryby providing a better, more positive customer
experience, from surprise mills prior tomove day to fund antics at unexpected times,
(03:46):
Pink Zebra Moving wants to make movingfun for its customers. Currently,
the company currently has ten markets andthey plan to open many more in the
next five years. Prior to thisbusiness and we'll unpack both in our conversation
today, Ron built two maids anda mop from one single location into nearly
(04:11):
one hundred locations around the country beforeexiting to focus his efforts on Pink Zebra
Moving. So with that as ourbackground, Ron Holt, Welcome to the
Chuck Crumpton Show. Dog. I'mso glad to be here, honored to
have the conversation. I'm sure,everybody's excited to talk about dirty toilets and
homes that need to be moved today. Well, listen, my friend,
(04:34):
I've got a feeling it's going tobe a great conversation. We were connecting
a little bit before we came onthe show. Of course, I'm in
beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. You'refrom the southeast. You and your wife
live in Birmingham, Alabama, whichis also a beautiful city, and you
(04:56):
have to be riding high on theGeorgia Bulldogs. Man looks so good.
Is there three peat that's coming?I sure hope. So you know,
I don't want to be too greedythough, because it was a long dry
spell prior to those two championships,So I'm going to take what i can
get at this point. But yeah, of course I live in like Birmingham,
where it's either all burned or Alabamacraziness. So it's it's been a
(05:18):
good run. Well, something tellsme you guys have taken ownership of one
of those teams in Alabama until mywife, we will get into local politics,
but you guys have a heck ofa program and a lot of respect
for your Yeah. Well, I'ma big fan. Hopefully we keep it
(05:41):
going. Yeah, there you go. I think everybody I've ever met from
uga or just darned good people,you know, just good. Yeah,
well I think so. I mean, I've heard a few people complaining about
you know, grown men barking.You know, outside of that, we're
pretty good people. They go,well, we're gonna just unpack, uh,
(06:03):
you know, the tremendous success youhad with two maids and a mop,
And then I really want to unpackwhat you're doing with Pink Zebra moving.
Yeah, and we'll talk. We'lltalk some personal we'll talk some business
stuff. My first question I typicallyasked my guest, you know a lot
of accolades, a lot of success. I want to I want to pull
(06:25):
you into some of those, uh, some of those points that I want
to make in the conversation. Buttell us right off the batman, who
is the real Ron Holt, sothat that person has changed involved over my
adult lifetime. If you would havetalked to me twenty just over twenty years
ago, I would have told youI'm the next word Buffett. I'm gonna,
(06:48):
you know, do all these great, big, huge global things and
have all sorts of dollars in thebank and try to be as humble as
possible, like you know, goodold Buffett is. As I've aged and
more importantly become a father of twoawesome little kids, and they've changed everything,
you know, and so I loveeverything about them, love being a
(07:09):
part of their lives. And youknow, now, I want to be
a great entrepreneur. I'm still anentrepreneur at Hart and I'm still chasing Buffett.
But my most important going to liveto be a great dad right now
and all the other things that comealongside of that. It's kind of gravy
at this point. Yeah, that'scool, man. Well, a lot
of business success I appreciate. Youknow. We hear this work life balanced
(07:33):
discussion all the time, right,I'm not sure if that's valid. I
get it right, that we needto keep things in perspective. What does
that look like for you? SoI've got an interesting, I think interesting
perspective on that. I tell thisto our franchise owners all the time,
both here and back at Two Maids, and so I believe that there's no
(07:57):
such things that I know. That'skind of a radical whole way to think
of it. If you love whatyou do nothing. And you've probably heard
this. Buffet says this, evenlike if you love what you're doing,
he calls it your tap tap danceto work. I just call it having
fun, you know, like whatI'm doing right now telling my story,
talking about all the things that Iwent through to sacrifice to get to a
(08:18):
you know, multimillion dollar business towhat I'm doing again now with Pink Zebra
Moving. It's enjoyable. It's itbrings joy to me. It energizes me.
It doesn't drain me like a job. If you told me to go
out and you know, work inthe yard, yeah, you know,
you know, it's not something Ireally want to do. That's work.
(08:39):
And so man, every day That'sone of the reasons I sold to me
is I'll tell you that story.As we talked today, I found myself
somewhat being drained towards the end ofthe day, and that was a red
flag for me because I've always believedthat if you love what you do,
then you're going to pour a lotof effort. And it's been love into
(09:01):
that vocation. Great things are goingto happen, maybe not every day,
maybe not even quickly, but they'llhappen, you know, And so work
life balance is important. Like Iwant to be a great dad, I
don't want to be a great husband. I want to watch the Georgia Bulldogs
on Saturday, you know. Butat the same time, nothing about what
I do ever feels like work,you know, And whether I'm whether you're
an entrepreneur or not, doesn't.You don't have to be an entrepreneur to
(09:24):
love what you do, you know. That's what I've chosen, that's the
path that's worked for me. Butlove what you do, great things are
going to happen. You're never gonnafeel drained, You're always gonna want to
go back to work. Like there'sit's been twenty years since I've hated Monday,
Morgan, you know. So thatto me is that's that's worked life
balance in a weird way. Yeah, that's good man. I like that.
Dave Ramsey, one of my heroesin the in the financial space,
(09:48):
says, you know, find somethingthat you love to do and figure out
how to get paid for it,right, and it it sounds like you've
got You've got the perf essional andthe personal. Not every day is different.
Some days are better than others,right, for all of us.
But it sounds like you've got agood, good handle all that. I
like crazy stuff like the challenge ofdisrupting an industry, the challenge of taking
(10:13):
an idea that you just thought about, you know, by yourself one day,
and building that into a national brandwith locations across the country. That's
a huge mountain decline. Right.You don't just do that, even with
money. You don't do that quickly. That challenge is fun to me.
I love it. I love allthe problems that come from that, all
the hysteria, all the stress andinterdests me, you know, And so
(10:37):
that's that's that's where I find joy. Yeah, that's cool, man,
that's very cool. I'm curious Andas I warned you right when we kind
of got started, I'm big intothe real and the raw, very vulnerable
approach just to life and the business. And I think it's a foundation of
(10:58):
cornerstone of leadership. But was therea particular point that you had that you
know, either as an entrepreneur,as a CEO, or as a dad
or husband, did you have thataha moment that you had to pivot in
your life? Oh yeah, Ican tell you this, So you know,
(11:18):
I was like everybody and that goesto Georgia got a job in Atlanta.
So I was a young twenty somethingworking in Atlanta. And if you've
ever lived or worked in Atlanta,you know traffic stinks. And so I
was making that daily commute and everyday I would look to the left and
the right of man, I seeall these other cars, and everybody was
just sort of staring and you know, doing their thing and making money and
(11:41):
doing it all over again the nextday. And you know, I come
from a blue collar family. Mymom and dad both worked their entire life
and continued to this day. Mymom and so work wasn't something I was
afraid of. I knew it well, but it felt so empty. And
so there was this moment I wasliterally on Interstate eighty five eighty five,
(12:03):
headed to the office, and Ilooked to my life. I looked to
my right like I have been doing, and I saw these empty sort of
just glares like I was having,and I had this like pit in my
stomach, and I said, somethis can't be the rest of my life.
Like at that point of my life, I had done very well in
the career. I was still inmy mid twenties, but I was able
(12:24):
to travel the world. In thejob I was in. I was managing
PhDs and chimal congineers and making prettygood money, you know, and high
life, you know, should havebeen at least, but that something that
was missing, that pit in mystomach that I felt. I was like,
man if I double my salary ortriple my salary, and it's still
(12:46):
here, that same feeling. Twentyyears from now, I'm going to look
back and reflect on this moment andgo, why didn't I try something else?
And so I didn't know anything aboutan entrepreneurship. I didn't know what
business ownership meant. That wasn't partof my life or upbringing. And so
this true story that day, Ithis is back when they had bookstores.
You could go visit bookstores by thesethings, you know, a couple books.
(13:09):
And so during my lunch break,I drove to the Merriam Mall and
I went to the bookstore just pickedout a business book because it seemed interesting.
It happened to be my guy werein Buffett, and just started devouring
everything about Buffett in his life,both professional and personal life. And I
(13:31):
just became motivated and inspired by thatand thought that I could do the same
thing. And I couldn't quit.I mean, I still had a whole
lot of work in front of meto get to a place where I could
financially do something besides work for thisparticular place, which is a great place
to work. Nothing wrong with theorganization. But over the next several years,
I worked my way into a placewhere I was able to take the
(13:54):
plunge and start a business. Itwas a cleaning business of all things.
You know. Yeah, I couldstill see myself on that interstate right now,
and how I felt that morning,and how I made sure that I
was going to do something to runaway from that feeling. Wow. I
love that, Ron, I reallydo. I had had a guest on
(14:15):
I think in season two, andyou were a chemist, which is interesting.
You went from being a chemist tostarting a you know, your your
business Two maids and a mob,right. I had a young lady again
I think in season two that hadbeen a chemist and decided to pursue her
(14:37):
passion and movies and you know,podcast and just a sort of the entertainment
industry. And she equated it tojumping off of a burning tower, which
you know, leaving the world ofbeing a chemist to making movies. You
almost can't connect the dots, right, yeah, you know, I my
(15:01):
corporate America was a little bit differentthan most people's version of corporate ameror called
it was very technical, you know. There there wasn't a lot of boardrooms
and white collars and stuff like that, you know. So, but what
I what I didn't like was therewas a lot of bureaucracy. You know,
there was a lot of decisions thatweren't always, in my opinion,
the best decisions for the business,but they were the best decisions for those
(15:24):
people that made those decisions. Andso I just didn't understand that. It
kind of blew my mind that peopledidn't really want to just take over the
world and everything they did, youknow. And so I said, if
I'm not going to be able tofit in to corporate America, then I'm
going to have to, you know, do it my way. And so
that's entrepreneurship was the easiest way todo that. And you know, at
the time, I didn't necessarily havethe capital to pull off these big ideas
(15:48):
and goals that I had, andso I kind of funneled my way to
home services. Because of that WhatI didn't know until later was that I
stumbled into what still remains, inmy opinion, the best industry there is,
Like home services are still it's justa strong demand from a consumer base,
and you know, a fragmented marketplacefrom carpet cleaners to moving companies to
(16:12):
cleaning companies and so on. There'svery few other industries that you can think
of where there's growing demand field orserved by like again, mom and pop,
fragmented marketplace. And so yeah,that's that's what led me to starting
a cleaning business, of all things. I didn't know how to clean a
(16:33):
house. I still remember telling mymother and father one that I was starting
the business, which they were like, wait a minute, we paid for
your school, what are you doing? And then two I was gonna you
know, they didn't they knew Ididn't know how to clean a house.
I never cleaned my room before,and so it was a little bizarre early
on. I love the idea ofrecording revenue. I love the idea that
was absolutely again like a trade basedbusiness. And so a lot of people
(16:56):
who owned cleaning businesses even to thisday, were just cleaning business people.
You know, they they were goodat cleaning and turned themselves into business owners.
And I just felt like there wasgoing to be an opportunity to do
something to really disrupt this industry.I didn't know what the disruption was going
to be, but I felt likethere was going to be an opportunity there
and just you know, save somemoney to have head first into it and
(17:18):
open to cleaning business eventually, andlater on April Fool's Day of all days
in two thousand and three, Wow, Wow, take us take us on
that journey for a moment. Ronand I picture I came. I came
out of a Fortune fifteen company latenineties to start my first business. And
(17:44):
you know, it was funny.I remember leaving I had covered parking downtown
Charlotte, overlooking the Panther Stadium.Life was good, you know, and
I went to the tool shed,you know, and said, okay,
let's create something. And I rememberthat first day vividly, you know,
over twenty five years ago. Now, the loneliness, the excitement, all
(18:08):
the emotion kind of rolled up intointo one. But it's a little bit
scary leaving that corporate job where youget paid every other Friday, and you
know, you travel the world likeyou say that first day, just walk
us through the essence of leaving thatcorporate job as a chemist and then cleaning
(18:34):
that first house that day. SoI had what I thought was a really
strong business plan, you know.It was cash flow forecasting out five years,
all these you know, strategic movesat certain revenue milestones. Like I
had a real strong plan in frontof me. And then the first day
happened. And so I had hiredpeople. So I had hired people prior
(18:56):
to this, Like, even thoughI was in my twenties, I,
like I said, had managed thisdepartments at this laboratory. And the employees
that worked for me were forty fiftyyear old men who were highly educated,
you know, and then the twentysomething you know managing them. Ironically,
they didn't want anything to do inmanagement. They just wanted to do the
work, you know, and soI was like, well, do the
(19:17):
management stuff. And so that's kindof how I found my way into that
role. So I kind of thoughtI knew it all, like, hey,
I'm pretty good at this, youknow, people seem to like my
leadership and so on. And soI hired these housekeepers and said, let's
go. You know, here's howyou do it, see Monday. And
so Monday arrived and only I'd hiredtwo people because it's two maids in a
(19:41):
mop. You just need two people, right, Well one only showed up,
so it was one maiden in amop, and so you know,
I'm like whatever, I'll just doit. Like this is kind of weird
because I've never hired somebody before itthat didn't show it for their first day,
but maybe that's just bad luck.And so I said, I'll go
do it. We had two homesto clean that day. They were both
complete nightmares for me because I didn'tknow what to do. I had not
(20:02):
really thought through that part, andso I had to sort of winged and
I'm sure to disappoint the customers thatwe had at the time. And from
that day forward, I said,Okay, I gotta learn from this because
everything I had planned on my firstday was promotion, you know, like
I was going to be grassroots.I was going to be talking to real
estate agents. I was going togo out and even reach out to other
(20:26):
home service companies that were similar inwhat you know, we could maybe piggyback
off one another and generate revenue.And had all these ideas, and I
found myself cleaning homes all day,and so I said, this isn't going
to work. I can't be thepractitioner every single day. And so I
pulled myself out of the solution andsaid, that's it. And so it
(20:47):
literally was the first and last daythat ever cleaned the house. And I'm
sure customers were thankful for that,but I appreciate the vulnerability on that.
Man. It's I guess a humblebeginning. Well, yeah, it gets
even crazier. So the next twoyears I proceeded to lose money every single
(21:11):
day, just bled read ink,you know. And that was not just
two years. It was like ahard two years. Because it was a
cleaning company on the Gulf Coast toFlorida, and so on the weekends we
would clean these, you know,condos and homes for all the tourists to
come in and out of town.On the Monday through Friday, during the
daytime, we were cleaning homes inthe morning time before eight o'clock, in
(21:33):
other words, we would clean upoffices and then after five o'clock we would
continue cleaning other offices around town.And so it was while I wasn't picking
up brooms. It was a verytime consuming endeavor and then you do all
that and and the day the rewardyou get is read inc It's tough,
you know, and so vision tome, that's a were probably an overused
(21:56):
word in business nowadays, but itwas really what fuelled me. It's what
made me think that this was allworth it. Because today I lose money
by working ten hours, but todayas a step towards the bigger goal,
which for me at the time wasto scale the brand across the country.
So I knew the step one wasto build a profitable, scalable business model.
(22:17):
And everything I did was experimentation,and at some point I figured that
my failures returning to successes, andeventually did. It took me two years
to make money, but I finallymade some money, and from that point
far where we started growing and openingadditional locations across the southeast. Wow,
you know, Ron, this thoughtjust occurred to me as you're telling that
(22:38):
story. I don't think i've sharedthis publicly, so bear with me if
you would. My first job outof college, I was fortunate and blessed
not to have a college debt.My parents took care of that, but
you know, first job, thevery low salary, didn't have any money
(23:00):
trying to buy a car, youknow, furnish an apartment, all that
kind of stuff. And my firstjob out of college was my salary was
twelve thousand dollars a year, whichis really hard to make a car pavement
and you know, put food onthe table and buy an occasional cold beer.
So I picked up a second job, and my first job was in
(23:22):
technology right right out of school.It was a great company, just just
a low base salary, and soto pick up extra money for my car,
pavement or beer or whatever, Iwent out and linked up with the
janitorial service and I would at nightclean office buildings and it was fine.
(23:45):
But during the day from seven toseven, I had a suit I was
required by the company. And thenat you know six or six thirty,
I take off the suit, puton my shorts, grab my rag in
my you know, in my shortsand the back pocket and go clean these
office buildings. And that was prettyhumbling. Actually. The funny, the
(24:07):
one funny story to that is oneof the companies that I was calling on
in my technology job, you know, sort of my real job during the
day I had to go clean thatoffice. And it was late eight nine
o'clock at night, and I wasactually in the VP's office, the office
i'd been in a few days earlier. And he comes back in the building,
(24:32):
true story, and I sort oflike hid behind the door, like
he's going to be really confused toknow me in my technology suit versus you
know, having a dust pan inmy hand, you know. So that
the only time it ever happened.But and I haven't thought about that story,
(24:52):
and gosh, thirty five years,but you just reminded me of you
know, how you do what youdo right, when you start a business,
you do what you do to makeit work, that's right. Yeah,
you do it because you believe inwhat you're doing. You know there's
a purpose behind it. And Ithink, whether you're cleaning homes or you
know, technology or whatever it mightbe, work as to matter, you
know. So if you work matters, then you'll keep doing it. So
(25:15):
that's that's why we do those things. Yeah, very cool man, Very
cool. Well, I've heard alittle bit of your story in the past,
a couple of conversations that you've hadthat I really enjoyed. One of
the points that I One of mytakeaways in a previous conversation that you had
was you personally bankrolled, you're acompany, two mates and a mop.
(25:38):
How difficult was that? And wasit? Was it a shoe string operation?
Accordant what you call a shoe string? Probably in today's world it would
be a shoe string. But Isaved over the course of about seven years
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.I numbers seemed appropriate to me, you
(26:02):
know, So there was a littlebit of science behind it, but mostly
it sounded like one hundred and fiftymillion dollars to twenty four year old with
no money, you know. Andso I put this plan together in my
head and I said, let's go. And then a few weeks later I
looked at I even set up thissavings account, separate savings account, and
that was where all this money wasgoing to end up. Well, two
(26:26):
three weeks later passed and it wasstill zero dollars, and I'm like,
hmm, that's a long way fromone hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I'll
never get there. And I startedfeeling like I was losing like this,
like despair kind of came over me. So about that time, I'm a
huge reader, like super nerd whenit comes to especially business books, and
so I had read this book onhabits. And there's a bit of a
(26:48):
bunch since then. Actually that eventake it a little bit farther, but
basically it said, hey, ifyou've got this big goal, figure out
what the plan is to get there, create daily, weekly habits to slowly,
but you know, surely, walkyour way towards that bigger goal.
Celebrate the little victories along the way, and then you know that way,
(27:10):
each little victory is more, eachlittle goal is more digestible than this huge
goal, and then at some pointyou'll look backwards and you'll be there,
you know. And so I'm like, oh, that sounds pretty easy.
I can do that, right,you know. And so that's what I
did. And so I put thisplan together where I had to save a
few hundred dollars a week and ifI could, you know, find this
(27:33):
extra you know, three or fourhundred dollars a week, then I would
deposit that into my savings account orFriday afternoons and then I would go celebrate
the victory. And so sometimes Ihit that, most of times I did,
but my entire week. My sevenday work week, or not work
we counted a week was a missionwhere I would drop off this money on
(27:55):
Friday afternoons and so I could.Part of that was just from good old
saving, you know. I mademoney from job. Whatever's left over went
to the account. That wasn't enough, and so I had to get other
jobs like you did. I hadto get these other jobs on nights and
weekends. I even started little smallbusinesses, my kind of craziest business that
(28:18):
seemed really ridiculous at the time.It turned out to be a profitable enterprise
for me. I was playing golfwith some friends one day and said,
hey, there's opportunities here on thisscorecard. If you know play golf,
you get the eighteen whole scorecard.And so I went to the golf pro
afterwards and I said, hey,if I give you these scorecards for free,
will you take them? They so, of course I will. So
(28:41):
I said, well, I'm goingto sell ad space on there, and
that'll be how I get paid,you know, And so they said,
whatever, go to it. Theydidn't really believe me, and so I
went out and I sold ad spaceto banks and a little small sandwich shops
and whatever, attorneys and everything thatwere members out, you know, at
the course and in Atlanta at thetime, and found a printer who would
(29:02):
print the Golf Corps score card,delivered it to them a few dollars,
started going to all these other areagolf courses around Atlanta, and rolled some
of my college buddies to be mysalespeople, and all of a sudden,
you know, we had this likeprinting business for golf courses. Love it,
man, I love it. Yeah, like just the hustle, you
know, trying to save a fewdollars. And so every single week I
(29:22):
would drop off this money, andI had these like various trophies I would
give myself. If I just metthe goal, then I would go have
a coal beer with a buddy,which doesn't seem like a huge victory for
a lot of people. But ifI didn't hit my goal, there was
no beer for me, you know, because I needed to save that dollar.
If I were to really trounce thegoal, then I would go reward
myself with a round of golf thatweekend. I was not married or kids
(29:45):
then, you know, so golfingwas on the table then. Yeah,
and then you know, there werebigger things along the way, but slowly
but surely I found myself, youknow, racing closer and closer to the
top, and so I finally gotto a place where I eventually hit it.
You know, six seven years later, I saved one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars all from just that slowgrind. You know, Yeah, it
(30:07):
was. It's awesome. At thetime, it just felt like, well,
this is what you do. Youknow, now, looking back on
it, it does sound a lotsexier and romantic than it was at the
time. Yeah, for sure,for sure. You know, I'm curious.
I feel like, at this juncturein the conversation, I want you
(30:27):
to speak. We have a wehave a lot of leaders that listen to
our show, right, it's weattract a lot of CEOs, a lot
of future leaders. As I said, we were sort of in our prep
phase of this conversation. You know, I don't really want to know how
(30:48):
much money you put in the bankwhen you when you sold two maids on
the mop. We're not gonna getin the weeds of the deal. But
I'm I'm really drawn to the climb, and I love your vulnerability and what
you just describe the journey of buildingthis business and socking away money and holding
(31:11):
yourself accountable and setting those goals.Man, that's a hell of a story.
And I'm I'm I'm drawn to that. I want to ask you to
speak right to the minds and thehearts of a lot of my listeners.
And we have our show has donereally well. We've got thousands and thousands
(31:32):
and thousands of listeners all over theworld. But I work with a group
of entrepreneurs as a as a mentor. I serve on the mentor board,
and I love it because these arethese are young entrepreneurs. Some of them
are twenty five and some are sixtyfive. But they're you know, new
businesses and new ideas and innovative andcreative. And I love it. But
(31:56):
having been an entrepreneur, you certainlyhave been an entrepreneur, and you know,
now two successful businesses. It canbe very lonely, right, it
can be very lonely in the toolshed, as I like to call it.
And sometimes, you know, justgetting to the next day. I
(32:17):
know that sounds really crazy, butin the life and the mind and the
heart of an entrepreneur, sometimes gettingto the next day, the next week,
the next month is all you cando, right, I want you
to open your heart for a momentand talk to that young entrepreneur again.
(32:38):
Twenty five or sixty five, itdoesn't matter, but they've launched out on
this new endeavor, this new mission. Talk to that guy that lady right
now who is trying to figure outthey're trying to figure out their phone,
their computer. You know, we'reto park. How to get this thing
(33:00):
go on, how to call onthat first customer, how to create a
business? Talk to that person rightnow, Ron, sure, So beyond
the nuances of what you're doing,the you know, the x's, and
I was pushed that aside for aminute, this is the like have fun
dreaming first, Like, just havefun. Dream so much real life stuff
(33:24):
that goes on when you own abusiness, right, how do you pay
the bills? You know, howdo you do this or whatever? And
it can really bog you down,and sometimes it boys you down so much?
Did you forget when you did inthe first place? So dream,
you know, dream big, figureout what you want and no matter how
big it is, or even ifit's not huge, whatever, that big,
(33:45):
huge goal is, own it.You know, believe in it.
And I know that sounds very phinein the sky, but you've got to
truly believe and whatever that big goalis, and you cannot forget that you
believe in it, because once youstop believing in it, everyone else is
going to stop believing in it aswell. And so in my case,
(34:07):
the first goal for two mates ina mob was to build a national empire
of residential cleaning franchises. My secondgoal is to sort of piggyback off that.
Here at Ping Zebra Moving. Wewant to still scale the country.
We want to have locations and everymarket across this nation, but we also
want to leave behind a legacy.We want to create a whole new category
(34:30):
within the local movement industry. Andwe think, one day, like you
said earlier, we're going to beknown as the world's first happy moving company.
There's going to be those old schooldudes and then there's new school guys
that really put on a show whenyou hire a moving company. And so
we're right now the lord ranger inthat space. But we think people will
follow us, and so that's ahuge goal. Sometimes even seems crazy right
(34:52):
when you hear that, you're like, who do you think you can do
that. It doesn't matter. Rightnow, we just get to have fun
dreaming and we start believing. Onceyou believe all the other stuff's going to
come together, it really will.You can never lose that faith. If
once you lose that faith, everything'sgoing to start feeling like work. And
so when you have those moments,when you have those valleys that you're going
(35:15):
to go through, whatever it is, and I can name a hundred things
that you're going to go through whenyou hit that valley and the second valley
and the third valley and so on, you've got to be able to look
back to why you started this andstill believe that what you're doing is worth
it. And if you do that, I promise you the passion that you
have for the work that you doand the belief that you have for what
(35:37):
you're trying to build, people aregoing to want to be a part of
that, and people are going towant to put a lot of effort towards
it and bring their own passion tothe workplace. And then you've got a
team of people who believe in whatyou're trying to do, and all of
a sudden you've got momental you know, so the people that I see,
so they succeed in business versus notsucceeding. It's not necessarily one person smarter
(36:00):
than the other one. It's noteven usually money related. It's just the
people that succeed never give up.And it's easy to say that, but
you never give up. If youbelieve in something, you can only lose
by quitting in business. And soif you keep believing, you're going to
keep working and at some point somethinggood's going to happen. Yeah. That's
beautiful, man, that's beautiful.Thank you. Yeah, and do well.
(36:24):
I think it's a message that leadersand particularly entrepreneurs need to know because
to you and you said it,I can't add to what you just said.
You will have those dark days,right, We're you know, if
if you leave the cave and goout and kill something and you try to
drag it home, you're going tohave good days and bad days. And
(36:47):
we have to be sustainable in ourdreams and our goals and our mission,
right, absolutely, yeah, becausethey're coming. You know, you're not
going to avoid those those moments.You're gonna make bad decisions, even you're
gonna have bad luck. Yeah,yes, you are. You know,
so now what you know what makesyou get up? And we want to
keep fighting. Everybody fights for areason, and the one that wants to
(37:12):
fight the hardest usually wins, youknow. And so the way I fight
the hardest is just believing you.I have more passion for this brand than
anybody ever, will you know,even though we're going to bring in a
bunch of franchise ease, our homeoffice is going to continue to grow,
We're gonna hire great movers across thecountry. No one's ever going to believe
more in this brand than me.Yeah, that's awesome, man. Well,
(37:34):
as a as a quick sidebar,I wish i'd have met you six
months ago because we lost some ofour stuff in a in a recent move,
and I wish you guys we're herein Charleston, but we're getting close.
Well okay, good, yeah,Well you just let me know.
Man, hopefully we're we're staying putfor a while, but we can definitely
(37:54):
give you some business here in thisthriving market the city. I do want
to I want to pivot for justa moment with two maids and a mop,
with one question that's near and dearto my heart, and then I
want to ask you quickly about justkind of franchising because you've worked through those
(38:17):
battles, and then I want tohear some good stories man with with pink
Zebra moving. So my question,and this is again near and dear to
me having sold two of my owncompanies, not being emotionally attached to the
first one, but very emotionally attachedto the to the second one that I
(38:39):
sold three years ago. Walk methrough, walk us through. You know,
you built two maids in a mopfrom zero to almost a hundred locations.
And we again we won't get intothe term sheet and the offers and
the l os and any of thatinto the weeds, but capture for us
(39:02):
the emotion of that moment, theday of clothes. Yeah, you know,
it's a I I dreamed about thatday as a you know, a
young entrepreneur and stall boats and vacations, you know. But when that day
(39:22):
finally happened, there was a lotof due diligence that led up to it.
And so in the moment of thedue diligence, it's just work.
You know. You're just answering thisquestion and providing this piece of data and
so on, and you kind offorget that at the end of that due
diligence period, it's over. You'vesold the business. And so you know,
I sold the business, and thatparticular day was very weirdly emotional for
(39:46):
me. There was certainly some joy, because you know, a life of
work, you know, had sometangible value connected to it. But it
was my children for a long timesaid they had two siblings. They had
their actual sibling and then two maidsin a mob. That's who I identified
(40:07):
as. I mean, I wasthe two maids of a mop guy.
Forever. If you saw me atan industry conference, I was the two
maids of a mop guy. We'rein the pink jacket, you know.
So when you sell a business that'sgone, you know, you have to
move forward in a different direction.And that isn't along you know, the
business isn't a member of my familyanymore. So there was it's I don't
(40:29):
I'm you know, my kids areyoung, so I don't know what the
experience is when a child, youknow, moves off to college. But
I guess it sort of had thatfeeling for me a little bit. But
this in this case, I couldn'tthey couldn't come back home. You know,
I wouldn't go see them on campus. They it was gone forever,
so you know, I wanted tolie. I was very emotional that day.
I went back and forth almost throughoutthe day to jubilation to you know,
(40:52):
almost tears, but you know,at the same time, it was
it was something that I felt wasthe right time, you know, I
was what I what I learned aboutmyself was that startup life, as crazy
as it sounds, startup life wasmore fun than CEO life. And I
recognized that because I loved both worlds. I had to go from small business
(41:14):
owner who cleaned a home every nowand then too, you know, president
of a regional business to a CEOof a national business. And you know,
when you go through all those differentiterations, you have to change how
you lead and make decisions. Andwhen I look back on all of that
(41:35):
journey, it was pretty clear tome that my the happiest moments of my
life when we were when we werein the early stages and it was us
against the world. So that's that'swhy I sold the business, and that's
why I went right back head firstinto another business right here in the home,
service of Space with pig zebra movingand it's when I'm doing today and
it's it's it feels like the olddays again. Oh that's good man.
I can I have the privilege ofseeing you face to face right, you
(42:00):
know, as we're doing this,uh, this conversation. I see the
zeal in your eyes. The passionis very evident, man, and I
applaud that. I appreciate it.Yeah, I mean it's again, it's
easy to It's easy to have passionwhen you believe it's something, So it's
not artificial. You don't you don'thave to, Like if we talk tomorrow,
(42:22):
hopefully you would feel the same way, because what I do is that
important to me. Yeah, that'svery cool. I do want to ask
you very quickly, and I feellike we could have a whole conversation on
franchising. A lot of us reallydon't understand. You know, I never
did that in my two companies.A lot of us don't understand franchising.
(42:45):
I've heard horror stories, I've heardgreat success stories. But give us,
give us a twenty thousand foot flyover of franchising. Do do we do
it? Do we consider it?Do we run from it? And capsulate
(43:06):
you? There are I call thisthere are two different types of business owners
in this world. There are theentrepreneurs. Really that's me, and then
there's franchise owners. And you couldprobably make a case for economy or something
like that for this, for thesake of this conversation, franchise owners and
entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are kind of okaywith startup pains. They are okay with
(43:30):
the struggle. They're okay being bythemselves. They're okay with a little bit
of their future being a mystery andan unknown that's weirdly fun to them.
Franchise ease want to own their daytoo. They want to have financial freedom,
they want to have flexibility in theirday and schedules, and they want
to be able to build value insomething that can return money back to their
(43:53):
family at some point. But theydon't necessarily like the idea of going through
those startup pains and knowing exactly whatthe future holes or how to do something,
you know, like how to tryto figure this out. They want
somebody else to kind of tell themto do that. Now, to do
that means you gotta pay up,you know, you gotta pay for that
coaching, You gotta pay for thosesystems and processes. That's where franchising comes
(44:15):
into play. That's who we areas a franchise or at the end of
the day, franchise a great franchiseor is a great teacher, a great
training and support mechanism. And that'swhat we do. We teach people how
to get to grand opening. Weset them up with strong vendors, we
set them up with tools, technology, and then our own internal team provides
(44:37):
business coaching and direction and we doeverything from making sure you're upholding the brand
standards, to overseeing you know yourmarketing spend and strategy, to helping you
learn how to move that. Thisindustry is very blue collar and so most
of our franchisees are a white collarand they don't know the difference between this
(45:00):
dolly and that dolly. And sowe've got people here internally that teach people
that. And at the end ofthe day, when it's all said and
done, that's what our job is. To make life easier for you to
be, to make your business moreefficient. And then over time, you
know, we all went, yourbusiness grows, you make money, and
so do we Yeah, that's good. Since and again we've heard we've heard
(45:22):
great success stories. I know you, and I wish we'd had time to
unpack your incredible conversation with Fred deLuca. That was incredible as I heard
it. I would I'd love tojust camp out there for a while,
but time fails us. Right,you took the story. Oh, I
would love to hear that story.I'd love for my audience the bottom line.
(45:45):
And Ron, we've got to doa second conversation because I've got I've
got eighteen questions just on franchising.But you know, you took two maids
in a mop from you know,one to nearly one hundred location. You're
taking Pink Zebra Moving. You're nowin ten markets, you're going to You're
(46:05):
gonna explode all over the Southeast andprobably the country. I see it,
man, I just my crystal ballis shiny and clear today, and I
see that you're going to have greatsuccess with it. Give us a fun
story. Man. You guys areyou're disrupting the moving industry? Yeah,
so we think the moving industry isbroken. You know, we think customers
(46:30):
need moving services. They'll spend alot of money for those moving services.
But we also think that almost everythingabout the consumer experience is broken, from
the broken and damaged items people experience, to the scuffed walls, to the
route sort of unprofessional behavior by moviesmovers, and then the big one,
(46:50):
of course, pricing is kind ofcrazy. Sometimes what you're estimate says is
three or four times more than whatit actually costs at the end, and
so all of that is to setsome cases even fraudulent. At the end
of the day, nobody wants topay a lot of money for something they
don't enjoy, and so that's whatmoving is. So I experienced that personally.
My mother in law locally here inBirmingham hired a move a company and
(47:14):
all the things I just talked abouthappened to her. And I started looking
within the industry to see if thatwas happening in other markets across this country,
and of course it was, andit surprised me in a good way
because I said, hey, youknow, here's an opportunity. It's two
twenty one at the time. Whatother industry can you think of that you
can disrupt by just doing things thegood old fashioned way. You know,
(47:36):
we didn't codify our way to thetop. We're just you know, going
to offer a better service. Andso when I saw that there was a
broken consumer experience model or issue.Then I said, well, what can
we do to attack that? Howdo we make the experience more positive?
So I started falling in love withthis idea of customer experience. The term
basically means a proactive approach to leadingcustomer down a journey so that when it's
(48:00):
all said and done, they feelgood about their investment or purchase or whatever.
And so I didn't feel like movingcompanies really thought of their customers in
that way. You know, weshow up with trucks and strong dudes and
we worked, you know, thatwas the journey. And so I said,
what if we were to actually makethis theater, What if we were
to put on a show? Whatif we were actually made moving fun for
(48:22):
our customers? You know, Ilove challenges, and so I created a
tagline, a slogan for our business, our brand called we make Moving Fun
and said, let's figure out waysto make moving fun. And so,
before, during, and after amove, our consumers literally get a show.
You know from you mentioned earlier andour intro of the free food offer.
(48:44):
It's kind of what we're known for, by the most part nowadays,
with a lot of other cool things. But every time we moved someone the
day before the night before the move, we provide them a free mill.
It's totally you know, on us, it's unexpected to make surprise. They
love it. You know, peoplesometimes have cried human in the past that
yeah, we provide surprise boxes fullof goodies and chocolates and candies and personalized
(49:08):
gifts. You know. In somecases, if you're a Georgia Bulldog fan
living in Charleston, then we're goingto find a Georgia Bulldog couzy to put
in there and say, go dogs. We do push ups to start the
day, we run in place throughoutthe day. We play music throughout the
house. I mean, we've gota mascot called Zeke ze Zebra. Of
course he comes out when there's childreninvolved, we put on a show.
(49:31):
And at the end of the daywhen we do, when our trucks lead,
we want customers to say, man, they did make moving fun.
And so that's that's our challenge toourselves. Our franchise Ease have accepted that
challenge. We're in ten markets today, like you said, we actually are
going to be opening in Boston verysoon. So we're gonna get outside of
the Southeast for the first time,and we've got a lot of other opportunity.
(49:52):
We're essentially available coast to coast inevery major market, and you know,
we can't wait to do it allover again. You know, we've
already been down this road once andwe know how to be a great franchise,
or we've proved that once with anotherbrand, so we're about to do
it again. And it's it's sofun and exciting. So man, that
is so cool. That is socool. Well again, I wish I
(50:15):
would have We sold our last houseback in December last year, and you
know, in this crazy market,had to move into temporary housing until we
secured the new house. And Iwish we'd have known you. So come
to Charleston, man, just cometo Charleston. Well, we'll be there
shortly. We're not quite there yet. We're around you, we're north and
(50:37):
south of you. We're not quitethere yet. Okay, sounds good,
Ron Holt, Man, this conversationhas fired me up, right, it's
invigorated me. On we're doing thisconversation on a Tuesday afternoon, but you
fired me up. It's it's agreat story. Both of your stories in
(51:00):
building your two companies, and theallegiance and the diligence, the attention that
you give to your family on topof just being a hell of a nice
guy. Man. I applaud yoursuccess and you know, we'll stand on
the side the sidelines as cheerleaders tomake sure that this new endeavor Ping Zibra
(51:25):
movement is just going to rocket togreat success. How can we follow you?
How can we point people to yourwebsite? Your LinkedIn? What's the
best way to track you out?Yeah, very visible on LinkedIn and easy
to find. I'm have a twosyllable name work, you know, so
yeah, look find me there andI guarantee I'll connect with you and engage
(51:47):
and you know, we'll talk.I love helping people. I've helped several
people bring ideas to life, youknow, over the last few years,
and so it's a passion project forme. Of course, if you're interested
in our franchise opportunity, again,we're available at most markets across this country
right now Ping Zebra Moving franchise dotcom. You'll learn about the investment expectations,
(52:10):
what your financial expectations even will be, what markets are available. You'll
go a little bit deeper dive intowhat we do on the consumer experience side,
and then of course what we doto help you get open and keep
you open. So Ping Zebra MovingFranchise dot Com. You can learn as
much about us as you can possiblylearn, and then that will eventually lead
to a conversation hopefully with me.You know, we can talk about the
(52:31):
franchise opportunity. That's awesome, man. Well, we will definitely continue to
follow you and again just applaud yoursuccess. Ron Holt, thank you for
being on the Chuck Crumpton Show.It's a pleasure, man, and I've
got to have you back. Ididn't get to ten percent of my question,
(52:52):
so carve out sometime in the nearfuture and let's just continue to unpack
this. Absolutely, I'll do it. It's a date. Yeah, that's
awesome man. Well, this hasbeen a great episode with Ron Holt.
This is Chuck Crumpton. Thank youfor listening to another Chuck Crumpton show where
(53:13):
life is real and raw and conversationsare great and encouraging. Ron Holt,
thank you for sharing a piece ofyour heart and I hope you have a
great week. I make you see. Yeah, something
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