059: A Chat With The Founder Of College Movers – Ethan Vastbinder

Title: A Chat With The Founder Of College Movers – Ethan Vastbinder

Guest: Ethan Vastbinder

Peter: Today, guest is Ethan Vastbinder. He is the founder and president of College Movers. One of the amazing things about Ethan is, he started the company in 2018 at the age of 22. I am so happy and grateful to have Ethan with us today. Welcome to the Biz and Life Done Well podcast, where we explore what it means and what it takes to do business and life well.

I’m your host, Peter Wilson. If you’re like me, you’re intrigued by stories of common people who have achieved uncommon success in business and life. Join me as I interview fascinating people about how they got started, their successes and failures, their habits and routines, and what inspires them. You’ve got this company College Movers. So what do you guys do?

Ethan: Yeah, so College Movers, basically the idea is connecting college students who are always needing a flexible work, I guess. For me, when I was in college, it was hard to find a job that really fit my schedule. So created this so that college students can go to a job and go help someone down the road from them so that they can work like three to five and then make as much as they would at like a four hour shift, you know, maybe working at the school. So I thought it would be a lot better opportunity for college students to just have a moving gig available or even an event help gig or, or something of that sort. We just connect college students to local people needing labor help.

Peter: Nice. What was the origin story of this?

Ethan: Yeah, so the founding story is, I always wanted to, of course, build wealth, become wealthy. And some people I had met back when I was around 18 or 19, they had tons of houses and I always wondered why the heck do you have so much money? And so I asked them and they said, well, we came up with this idea to help farms connect to field workers, you know, down in Fresno, California area. So that kind of just instilled in my mind, stuck with me. And then, you know, just being ambitious, I would stay up sometimes.

I just couldn’t stop thinking until I came up with a business idea. So some nights I would stay up until five in the morning, especially on this specific night. And, the first idea I came up with, had like a businesses tab, I had a website tab and an app tab for like business ideas I could do. So, you know, the first one I said was college kids being movers for their community. It would be a business where people could support college kids by paying them to help move their house.

This would be supported by each college. That’s the eventual hope kids would sign up. This could start in Utah. I had an idea Utah as an idea because you know, most of my friends were in that area and I thought it’d be a decent area. Yeah.

And then I just said we would need to hire a manager for each college making whatever amount. Problems with this. I identify a problem right away problems with this or college students are super busy and would not be able to do this every day. So I kind of left that, you know, I had that idea. So I talked to some friends about it.

What are you saying?

Peter: So you wrote that in a notebook at four or five in the morning?

Ethan: Yeah, probably at like four in the morning.

Peter: Wow. And that was your original, the thought that came out and that’s exactly what you’ve built.

Ethan: Yeah, exactly what I just read was exactly what I typed that night.

Peter: This is September. Me just tell you, it doesn’t always happen that way. Okay. Yeah. That’s amazing.

So you started the company 2018. I was looking at your LinkedIn profile. It looks like you had a couple of jobs. It looks like even when you started this company, you were working another job as well. Tell me about that.

Ethan: Yeah, so I was working at a retailer for Verizon selling phones. Kind of how the thing, way worked at life worked out for me was, I was going to college full time. My wife was working and she actually had a kid when she was in her teenage years. So we had one kid together, got married, I became an Insta father. And then, you know, I personally did not like having a family while going to full time college.

I wanted to like rush to make good money. Yeah. And so I got a full time job working at Verizon and then randomly I looked back at my notes and I was like, you know what, I’m gonna try this. So I started posting on Craigslist and getting jobs, and that’s basically how it started. My friends started working for me.

Peter: So you, would go out on the jobs yourself as well to kind of manage things?

Ethan: I would on the weekend. I worked five days a week at Verizon. And so mainly I was just kind of accessible from my phone I would send whatever the customers needed to my friends and then they would go and do it while I was busy.

Peter: Got it. So you were doing that through Craigslist?

Ethan: Yeah, mainly Craigslist at first.

Peter: Yeah. And what did your friends think about it? Did you lose any friends?

Ethan: No, they loved it. I mean, moving is great because you actually get, it’s kind of like a tipping industry, I guess. So, some customers, especially being college students and that’s what I think was great is some customers will be like, you know what? I remember being in college and being in debt. Here’s an extra bit.

We obviously have the standards where I try to pay more than the state average by a good amount, but it’s also nice because again, customers want to tip.

Peter: Yeah. Pretty cool. So you started off, you’re doing one location, city, one area, you’re advertising on Craigslist. Going from that to beginning to scale is probably the hardest thing for a business. I’m kind of curious how you did that.

Like how did you scale up? How did you manage to make it work at a bigger scale and then in other places?

Ethan: Yeah, it was definitely a learn as I went kind of thing. Luckily, have really good friends who I shared the idea with, and I had a few friends who were able to try it down here in Utah where I live now. And I obviously saw a better market in Utah. Idle Falls was a lot smaller back then. So I felt like I’m not getting as much work here.

I want to try it in Utah. So, you know, we started to go through Craigslist again down there, you know, got all foreign qualified down there. And, we actually expanded through Thumbtack, which is a good way to expand for new businesses. I’m not a huge fan as you get bigger and bigger stages of a business, but good way to expand is through Thumbtack. So we did that, found a lot of jobs through that And my friends did it for as long as they wanted to.

And then I took over eventually.

Peter: So one of the key factors has got to be some sort of college nearby, right?

Ethan: Yeah, so we try to stick to one of the bigger colleges and I try to research whether it is a high growth area with potential to have a lot of residential moving because moving is our main thing of being college movers. And so through that, I’ve been able to research different locations. I have a lot of family and friends all over the country. So that’s how I’ve been able to have the luck to expand into new locations, you know, through my friends or connections. I’ve been able to find someone who has been looking for an opportunity like college movers for a time in their life.

Peter: So you’re, the the folks that you’re hiring, like, permanently then are the manager like, the location manager type people.

Ethan: Yeah. Yep. So they’ll they’ll be the ones working hard to connect the students to the the moves that customers request.

Peter: So tell me, what is the weirdest move you guys have done that you can talk about?

Ethan: I mean, I guess it’s not bad. This lady will probably never get on the internet, but my good friend Johnny and I, he works with me and we went to a move, to basically junk out a house. This lady was getting evicted. Her house was a complete mess, crap everywhere. Just, you, you know, you couldn’t step without take a step without stepping on some magazine or anything.

Yeah. Whole basement was cluttered full of stuff. And so that was already worse enough. And then we come to find out, you know, I’m cleaning out the, her son’s room. She lived with her like 30 year old son.

Yeah. Was quite scary. I don’t know if it belongs on this podcast, but he leaves a note. The son leaves a note and says, I’m sorry, mom. I’m going to kill myself.

No. As we’re doing the move. No. But she said, you know, the reason why we weren’t too scared is because she said that he’s done this many times before. But then it sends this lady into a couple hour crying frenzy.

And while we’re doing the move, have to, we have the police there doing all this stuff. So it just made this like five, six hour move turn into, it was like a twenty hour thing. We had to come back for days and days and days and do so much more because of this whole mess.

Peter: Oh, man.

Ethan: But it was just horrible. And then, we took the stuff to this lady’s storage unit after working so hard for her. And she was in the right mental space. I get a call from her just harassing calls, basically saying that we stole stuff, that we had stolen things out of her storage unit and that she was missing big pieces of furniture, which was not true. And I had insurance agents and all these things calling me and I’m like, this I’m sorry, but this is not a sane move.

Peter: Right.

Ethan: So that that’s probably my craziest.

Peter: Oh my word. That is nuts.

Ethan: A lot more than you think. Moving is not as smooth as it it may seem sometimes. I mean, it’s definitely not the smoothest thing in the world anyway, but Yeah. It’s Yeah. That was rough.

Peter: Wow. So you almost have to be like a, have some therapy hat on or?

Ethan: Yeah, you got to cover your bases for sure, especially with people that kind of seem like they’re not in the right state of mind.

Peter: I would imagine that you could also refuse a job if you had to. Probably want

Ethan: to help with Especially with this lady, she calls and she, I don’t usually do the moving as much anymore, Expand and stuff. But whenever I hear about a big opportunity, this was supposed to be a big move, good profit. So I was like, you know what? I can’t turn this down. So then that’s when I come into play and I try to do the move.

And let me tell you, that is when everything goes wrong. Anytime I am trying to be a saint and try to help these people is the absolute worst situation in the world. So I’m slowly learning to not be a nice guy as much as I am. I try to save these people and it turns

Peter: I hate to say it, but there’s some phrase about no good deed goes unpunished. I know that’s not necessarily the way you live your life, thinking that. Oh, Oh, man. Yeah. Wow.

I’m Oh, wow. So as you scale the business, you’ve gone You’ve got to nine locations now. What what was the biggest challenge that you had along the way of scaling?

Ethan: Well, the big the biggest challenge for us honestly is, you know, moving has a lot of seasons. You know, moving season’s crazy from, I’d say April or May until about September, October.

Peter: Okay.

Ethan: So it’s really rough to say you want to open a location say I wanted to open a location in Denver, Colorado right now. I could go and do it and I could go file for all the right things. But the issue is that the best time to scale in my opinion is during the winter. But at the same time, it is three times as slow than it is during the summer. So then you go in and you want to hire a new manager to look, manage that location, but you go in with the promise of not that good of money.

You have to come up with some way to make it seem, you know, like a good opportunity, obviously. Right. So I feel like that’s been the biggest issue is because it’s a seasonal thing, we mainly have to do everything right before summer hits. And so let’s just go, go, go, go, go for a couple months. I guess you could compare it to accounting season with tax season.

Peter: Right.

Ethan: But in winter, it’s just dead slow. So you have to find the right medium of when to do expansion. You can’t, you can’t do it just anytime you have to do it at the perfect time. And so that obviously that varies per business. And for us, we found that it’s just right before, summer, you know, in that springtime area, when things start to pick up and when we can start getting new business contracts.

So, so yeah, that’s really been the biggest challenge is hiring at the right time.

Peter: Right. One thing I’m kind of curious about is, and you don’t have to share this obviously if you don’t want to, but what what I’m just curious, what is the mix of your business? Is it like 50%, 50% commercial, 50% residential, or is it skew much more residential, or does it just depend on time of the year?

Ethan: Revenue wise, I would say it is probably 30% commercial, and that is about 70% residential. Most of the people that call us are looking for help you know, loading or unloading their truck. And if you, if I were to look at my schedule today, 95% of the jobs would be residential. And then w you know, we might’ve had one for a local company that we help a couple of times a week. And then obviously we have contracts that we try to go for with, you know, like of course the city of Seattle or any city, any major city that needs help.

We, you know, we try to get in on that. Those obviously make more money. Yeah. So that’s kind of where we fit. We want more business help.

We want the consistency because we feel that would alleviate our issue with hiring new managers and expanding that would alleviate that because then during the winter, theoretically would have more consistent work as well.

Peter: So

Ethan: that’s kind of our goals right now.

Peter: Yeah, that sounds like a real challenge, real big challenge. So we got together in about October 2020. So we’ve been doing some We have a mutual acquaintance, mutual friend, Lauren and Laughlin, introduced I think it was through your dad. So we started doing I think we built your website around think I we started around then, but it took a while to get it. I think it was probably I don’t recall exactly when we launched it.

Then we do some other marketing for you. So when you’re looking at your business, what role do you see the online side of things play? Is it the number one source of activity or is word-of-mouth pretty

Ethan: good Yeah, to it’s, I mean, if I look at my numbers right now, word-of-mouth is probably like 15% of our moves. Obviously we want that to get higher, really online is everything for us. I can’t imagine being able to scale this quick and fast if we were, say, in the ’80s or ’90s. Thank goodness for advertising.

Peter: Buying Yellow Pages, Yellow Yeah, Page

Ethan: I just can’t imagine.

Peter: And a phone book that comes out once a year.

Ethan: Yeah, that would be a lot of work. I mean, I’m sure it’d fun and I’d probably have really cool relationships with people, trying to scale the business that way. But it’s kind of like a cheat code compared to the nineties. It’s everything for this company. And I know it will continue to be forever.

That’s how we’re going to scale is fully online. So, we have our little programs for word-of-mouth and for the local community, and that is not somewhere where effort is wasted. But you can definitely get higher results in my opinion through online.

Peter: Through the online. Yeah. Do you mind sharing what your goals are with the company? You’ve been at it four years now or almost four years. Where do you see this company in five, ten years?

Ethan: Sure. So our goal really is, the first goal of the company was honestly to be an Uber or Lyft of moving. There’s a couple of companies like that in the country already. But I thought it would be a nice twist on it with college students. And so I really forgot about that, I’d say for a year or two, because I was just trying to figure out everything.

I was trying to get every detail figured out with the business before I expanded and got myself lost in some cause, I don’t know. And really what I wanna become is I wanna become a company that can be loved by colleges and supported. Like say you’re a college student, you come to college, my goal would be that those new freshmen that are coming in, they can be like, Oh, what’s a local job I can get off my time from classes? And I would love for one of their top five suggestions to be, Oh, you can work for college movers. It’s an awesome flexible job.

And it makes the most of your time off of school. I want to be recognized as an amazing job for college students right as they get in. The other thing is I want, we’re really trying hard to get in with colleges and that’s gonna work hand in hand with what I just spoke about. I would love colleges to even recommend us and say, Hey, students go work for College Movers. This is like a college endorsed job that you can get to help your local community moving.

We do everything. We do moving, we do event help, we do business help, we can even rake your leaves. Whatever is needed that you don’t technically need a license or a certification for, That’s what I feel like college students are best for. And what better way for college students, say I’m attending a place in California, a college in California, I feel like that’s a great way for a college student to learn their city is to work a job like this.

Peter: Meet local folks.

Ethan: Yeah, exactly. So I personally would love to be in every major city. And I think that really is our five year goal. We really have, we have revenue goals, not that I care to share those too much.

Peter: Of course not, no.

Ethan: It’s really just, we want to be in every major college city. And I know that it can work out, but the first steps to that are we want to build an app, an application so that movers can go in there and have an easier way to connect with their local jobs. And then back to that Uber and Lyft thing is, Uber and Lyft, we were going to do contractors at first, but we switched to full employment as to give better support to the students. So that is a little bit harder on our end, but we’re okay to take that burden as long as it’s a sustainable way. Because the gig economy is kind of shaky right now.

Peter: Right. So you so your folks that work with you are primarily W two?

Ethan: Yep. Yep. A 100% now. So Wow.

Peter: That’s huge. I mean, that that is that that is is a huge step in your direction. I mean, there’s so many folks that are trying to do ten ninety nine employees and just trying to skate through the They’re trying to thread the needle on, are they employees? Are they not employees? Blah, blah, blah.

Ethan: Yeah, exactly. Especially if I say as a company leader that I want to help college students, I can’t say that by putting that as a ten ninety nine, because most of I get out of high school, I had no idea what independent contractor status was. I had no idea you had to file separately. And so, you were me, I think I did Uber or Lyft when I was 18. I don’t even think I filed as a ten ninety nine.

I just brushed it under the freaking rug. Yeah. So, I just feel like this is a lot better way. Again, it’s harder. Ten ninety nine is really easy.

It’s so easy to do that. But again, I feel like it puts the students in a kind of back into a corner and they kind of figure out something hard. So

Peter: when you hire folks, is there any magic to, you know, and you don’t have, if it’s your secret sauce, certainly don’t reveal it, but are there any telltale signs that this person’s gonna work out?

Ethan: Yeah, usually you can tell by how I I guess it’s a bad way to measure it in some cases, and I’ve had this way, but how fast they respond, how eager they seem to go and help. And then that’s, that’s really it. Like for me, it’s seeing how eager they are. Usually people are like, if they’re not hungry for work and they’re, you know, kind of just like, yo, I want a job. Then usually they are not.

And it’s pretty much a 100% case like someone just comes to me and they’re like, Hey, I want a job. And they don’t really introduce theirself. It makes sense. They’re not like, Hey, I’m so excited to work for College Movers. I don’t really care if you’re excited to work for my company that much.

Peter: Right.

Ethan: Because I don’t wanna hold you back. I want you to just make money. But if they’re eager to work, they’re usually amazing. I want people that are eager to help a customer. That’s what I would want if I hired my company.

But there’s a lot of people nowadays that just like, whatever, they just have a don’t care attitude.

Peter: So why would they even respond? Is it just because their their mom told them to?

Ethan: Yeah. I’d say it’s just like just to say that they tried, you know?

Peter: Or or they they like the idea of having a job, but they don’t but it but

Ethan: Yeah.

Peter: But reality of it is reality bites, so they

Ethan: don’t We want have so many instances where people have no showed, where we have them scheduled for a job and they’re like, Hey, we’re ready to work. And then you text them even an hour before, which should be a foolproof method for making sure we’ll get there. And then all of sudden, nothing. You don’t hear anything ever again. You just got to find the happy medium and it can suck sometimes, but I’ve at first it really, really hurt me when that would happen.

And I’d have to tell customers, I’m so sorry. I have no idea what the heck is going on, but I’m trying to get you helped. At first it used to stress me out like crazy and it still stresses my managers out like crazy. But as sadly as it is, you know, with this type of job, I’m like, I’m sorry. I’m going to try my best for you.

I really want to really want to help you. We’re not trying to put you in a bad spot, but you know, I just learned that honesty is really the best policy.

Peter: Yeah. Sometimes it’s not about what happens, it’s about how you respond.

Ethan: Yeah, we’ve really tried to build measures that make it so that we don’t have those things happen. And we have meetings on it every week on how to prevent this and that, but they still happen. And it’s just because of human error. So, nothing we can do about that. That’s just something we have to deal with to grow.

Peter: Yeah, you and every other business in The United States.

Ethan: Yeah, exactly.

Peter: In closing here, I wanted to ask you a couple more questions. One, do you have any free time? What do you like to do in your free time?

Ethan: Yeah, I do actually have free time. I love to spend time with my family. I have three kids and then my wife, of course. We do take up a lot of helping my family. Have two siblings I love to spend time with.

I have five siblings, but two are close to me. I have four siblings actually. And then, you know, we were taking care of my sisters or my wife’s siblings for a while. So family is family is majority of my time.

Peter: Right.

Ethan: And with family, I like to go fishing as we have done recently. I love to anything outdoors, hiking, fishing. Yeah. I have ATVs, kayaks, just love it all. I love video games.

I’m just a jack of all trades in my opinion.

Peter: An enthusiast. You sound like me. One of my friends said you have too many hobbies. Ethan and I got to go fishing last weekend. I introduced Ethan to the terminology shaker, which is a small fish that basically we just shake off the line because it was too small.

But you’re going to come back out and we’re going to go catch some big ones.

Ethan: Yep. I’m hoping so. Big king salmon.

Peter: For sure. Yeah. And is there anything that you want to just kind of tell our audience or share with our audience? I mean, you’re a college student and you’re looking for some work, could certainly go to collegemovers. Is it collegemovers.us?

Is that your domain?

Ethan: Collegemovers.us. Yes. There’s anybody you know that is looking for labor help, even reorganizing their house. We do that job a ton. We help a lot of people clean their homes and make it so that they have, I would say more peace in their home, that they can breathe a little bit in their home.

That’s a good idea right there. But honestly, the last closing thought on my end would be, there’s been, especially with expanding, there has been a lot of trials. And for most people, I feel like it would completely crush. And I don’t mean to demean anybody, but it would completely crush them the stuff that we’ve gone through. Luckily, I’ve kind of been able to build this attitude where I’ve lowered my stress levels completely.

And I just know that things are gonna work out. So I guess the last thing I would add is that, if you are dealing with, maybe it’s trouble with the government, you just don’t know how to go about your idea that you have, there’s a lot of help. There’s people rooting for you and there’s even like small business administration. They have locations where you can actually go and talk about how to start a business and there will be people that will consult you for free on how to get going. So whenever I find myself in a trap, I just make sure to communicate honestly with whoever might be able to help me.

And that’s how I’ve gotten through it all.

Peter: Yeah. Well, I think that’s how we met, was through a connection like that.

Ethan: Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to fix my Google Ads and figure out how to be not wasting money. And that’s how we got to build our friendship.

Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you, Ethan, for your time today. And, I’m rooting for you and can’t wait to see where you are in three or four years, five years.

In the meantime, let’s go catch a big fish.

Ethan: Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you so much, Peter. It was good to talk to

Peter: Thanks for listening to this episode of Biz and Life Done Well with Peter Wilson. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most of the other popular podcast platforms. Please tell your friends about us and leave us a review so even more people will find out about us. Thanks again. We’ll see you soon.