186 | An LGTQ+ Trauma Informed Moving Company with Trix Kirkpatrick
Our guest this week on the pod is Trix Kirkpatrick. Trix is the founder and owner of A Move to Remember, a LGTQ+ owned moving company in Chicago. They specialize in helping people in the LGTQ+ community move as well as atypical moves - those involving bed bugs, clients with hoarding tendencies, unfair evictions, roommate disagreements, etc.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Trix Kirkpatrick Awarepreneurs Interview
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Trix Kirkpatrick
Paul Zelizer 00:02
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of The Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience and is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce today's guests and our topic, I have one request. If you could go over to iTunes or whatever app you're listening to this show on and subscribe and do a rating and all those good things it helps tremendously. Thanks so much. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce Trix Kirkpatrick and our topic today is an LGTBQ+ trauma informed moving company. Trix is the founder and owner of a move to remember, an LGTQ+ plus owned moving company in Chicago. They specialize in helping people in the LGTQ+ community move, as well as atypical moves. This includes things like bedbugs, clients with hoarding tendencies, unfair evictions, roommate disagreements, etc. tricks, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on here. Boy, am I excited and I actually posted in the aware printers community that I'm going to be talking to you and people were so excited. So I'm not the only one that's excited. We love what you're up to and want to hear all about it. But before we do that, we're called aware printers. And one of the ways we like to get to know someone has to ask you about a wellness or awareness or self care practice that you personally use to help resource yourself for this really important, but not always really easy work.
Trix Kirkpatrick 02:10
Definitely something that I've found really important, especially, especially after coming out of this last summer doing this was on the scheduling my time. Essentially, I I found this just in terms of looking up, I think wellness, you know, things that are really good for people for maintaining their wellness and health, especially when doing work within the field, and unscheduled one's time in terms of basically scheduling your playtime first, your rest time, and your sleep time time away from from doing the work that you do is has been really impactful for me because I know, when I get really passionate about doing something, especially doing the work we do, I tend to fill up my days from from 8am till 9pm with things that are just geared towards work, and then that considerably kind of leads to a type of burnout, or can lead to kind of a resentment of what we're doing. But when I make space to to step away for a second, it definitely is a revitalizing method just to keep pushing forward and doing what we're doing.
Paul Zelizer 03:01
I think about all the all of them, many of the people who do the financial education and literacy work, they say pay yourself first pay yourself first, right? Like Yeah, money in the bank. This is like care for yourself first Kevin, like literally put in your playtime put in your sleep time put in the you know, deucey Yoga timer, whenever I hear you say like put that in first, so that it doesn't get lost and all the buisiness
Trix Kirkpatrick 03:27
Yeah, I mean, people will say, directors of the nonprofits that we work with, or have worked with that or even just I personally work with it and pass them first thing that they always say in training when training volunteers is you can't pour from an empty vessel. Right. great wisdom.
Paul Zelizer 03:45
Thanks for sharing that trick. So you did some really cool work before you did that you did some other really cool stuff. We're going to get into what you do now. For instance, talk to us about the circus. How can we not talk about the circus? Yeah.
Trix Kirkpatrick 04:02
I have like this really great opportunity to travel with Cirque du Soleil from 2017 to 2019. And I was the assistant to the buyer on tour. So essentially, I was just a runner, I started out as a runner and ran errands for different departments and stuff. But definitely grew into my role and learned more about managing rental contracts managing logistics for site operations. I love that knowledge to definitely fell into supporting what we do now. But I traveled I traveled with them for two years and got to got to live within. I think it was 10 or 11 different US cities over the course of two years. And I had plans to be the buyer on the 2020 show before you know COVID 19 happened and and the entertainment industry kind of took a hit with that with that but the Yeah, traveling with the circus was, was, I think, you know, a lifetime experience. It was something I've always wanted to do. Ironically, I was always, whenever I did performance art, I was always someone who was interested in circus arts specifically, and I have a unicycle that I practice on. By no means am I a professional, you know, cyclists, but it was kind of the dream. That sounds so cool. How often do you talk to somebody who like not only was like with the circus, but Cirque du Soleil, like the circus? Yeah.
Paul Zelizer 05:37
Give us give our listeners a sense, because because it, it built a muscle like the idea of logistics and moving things like that. That's a big production. Like when you're moving Cirque du Soleil. Like, I'm trying to wrap my head around some of the logistics like, can you tell us a few stories? Like, what's the scale of moving for the entire show? at that, you know, those number of people, like how many trucks does it take? What does it involve to move a show from one major city to another? Yeah, I think we had, so I, I worked with the big top productions. So we, we have probably, I would say there were at least 40 trailers on site, if I'm, if I'm remembering correctly, about like, 12 to 15 of them being fully operational, from the from the like, the shop to,
Trix Kirkpatrick 06:32
to the artistic like, tent to the toilets to the to the kitchen. And then also just, you know, the other trailers for storing supplies and, and doing the logistics of that and we would set up, we would set up on a vacant lot, essentially. And there's so many hands that go into it, you have you have the actual sector slate crew, you have the temp labor, who comes in and helps do, for example, what's called a big push, it's like, I think, I feel like my numbers are a little off, but definitely like 75 100 hands on the big top with, with just your bare hands pushing up big poles as a group, going around the tent, and sections. And if you do it incorrectly, it becomes an unsafe, you know, environment, but you're basically just saying 123 push, and you're pushing up these big poles to literally physically set up a big tough space that's gonna see, like 2500 people. And on my side of things, working with the buyer, we took care of things like the module offices that would be there just within the city we showed up to and the Hertz rentals and the Penske rentals. And all of those contracts went into it. But there were so many hands both from Cirque and both just people within each city that took a huge part in making a show successful, from setup to tear down,
Paul Zelizer 08:09
does mind boggling in terms of the logistics. And as he built that muscle. One of the things that started to happen if I understand your story, correct, is you would like to be in a city and on a day off or just like as a service project. You're like, Well, I know logistics, I know about moving shit. I'm going to help some people. Right. And you started helping people move particularly some people who might not be the average customer for your average moving company. Is that anywhere in the ballpark of how you got started in all this?
Trix Kirkpatrick 08:40
Yeah, def Yes, that's correct. Before I left, what, before I left with this circuit is can kind of just you know, ran away from home. I was doing moves in, in Chicago for the community. I'm just basically as like a side hustle. But when I was just helping people move on tour it, it was the same kind of thing. It kind of started out as a side hustle, especially during the first nine or 12 months I was on tour, I was just doing gigs off of, you know, gig based applications. Or I would hop on to the local Facebook group for the community because most major cities have something called a queer exchange, which is a place for you know, queer people to connect with each other, whether that's, you know, posting about a space out there looking to rent or needing help finding health professional that falls within their insurance or just selling like, you know, your couch or, or whatever. And I would either hop on there work off of TaskRabbit and ended up working considerably with quite a few queer people or quite a few people. while on tour that were going through various situations. One time in Boston, I got called for a TaskRabbit gig. We'd like for these, like, they kind of get an understanding of who you are on your bio, but you don't have an understanding really of who they are, you kind of just show up and do the tasks. But in Boston, for example, I worked with someone who I know was getting evicted, because their their month to month lease got terminated, because they complain to their landlord about a lead pay issue, right. And instead of contacting the city first or going through the hoops to avoid any type of, you know, legal to avoid, like to be able to legally hold them accountable for retaliation, they kind of skipped a few steps in adjust it with their landlord directly. And their landlord just basically said, Well, I'm terminating your lease. And so I worked with them to basically, you know, clean up their space, get them out of their space, move them into a storage unit, and then help them with some like, minor maintenance stuff with their camper. Because they were, they were planning just live in their small little camper that they attached to their, they're like four door car, to, to wait it out and and figure out what their next move was. And those logistics to like things like small maintenance stuff, make maintenance in a camper, I definitely learned from the site guys while traveling with the circus.
Paul Zelizer 11:18
So you doing that kind of like as a side gig when you have some free time, earn some free money, and earn some money in your free time. And you're going along and you're like, Alright, I'm gonna be the buyer for Cirque du Soleil and like things are gonna happen. And then surprise along comes a global pandemic. And sorry, tricks. We've got other plans for you, right? Like, first of all, what was that, like? COVID hit and you're like in this entertainment business and talk about an industry? I'm not sure which got hit harder the cruise industry or the entertainment? Like,
11:54
yeah,
Paul Zelizer 11:55
yeah, it's pretty high up on the list, in terms of what was that like for you and the other people that you were working.
Trix Kirkpatrick 12:03
It was, it was kind of it was kind of wild. So for for, for Cirque, we we completed the tour, at least the US part of the tour before they went overseas, around last. Like last September. And so a lot of a lot of us were just waiting out for for the next tour if we didn't hop on to a different tour. So so my mentor was going to train me on the 2020 tour. And when that hit for, for all the sick people was kind of just honestly a shock. And we still connect and talk to this day about just like missing a and sharing stories and sharing photos of our experience. But for for my local community for a lot of the people who I work with now, like a lot of the people who ended up applying with us have worked in the service industry or have worked within industries, the performance industry that just got hit really hard. And it was honestly just a shock for everyone.
Paul Zelizer 13:11
Not only imagine I'm so sorry that it was so hard on you. So you knew how to help people move. And you've been doing as a side gig. And usually Alright, I'll do this while maybe I figure out what comes next. And what happened next does it blew up? Yeah. Right? Well,
Trix Kirkpatrick 13:33
it was it during, during, during, like, the fall of 2019. When I came back, I I interviewed to be in a business boot camp that was hosted by the LGBT Chamber of Commerce in Chicago. And you know, at the end of the boot camp, we like the biggest the biggest goal was to prepare a pitch deck and, and how to speak with, with you know, investors about your idea or your plan in my like, back then to in the fall of 2019. My this has always been kind of a passion project, this, this passion project developed, like in the spring of 2019. It just was figuring out a way to get there. But at the end of it, you know, my mentor was just like, you know, if you just take the dive tricks, if you just take the leap, I believe that that, you know, it'll, it'll succeed. And COVID-19 kind of just became that leap. And I don't know, we took that leap. And then a month, a month later, we like our profits grew like I don't know, like 500 600% or whatever. And the community just got so overwhelmingly supportive. Everyone really wants to you know, support a small business during COVID-19. But not only a small business and like a queer own business that here to support the community. And on top of that, like, besides just our regular clients like blowing up The business and given us work like we, we worked with several people, especially at the turn of the pandemic. And and since then who, who are within the community or just within communities that know got hit really hard and had to move or had to find someplace. Like, that just was better for, for their circumstances, whether they were moving back home with their parents or whether they were trying to, you know, move away from, from a partnership that was just not healthy for them. We we just started getting like messages and hear people's stories throughout the pandemic of how this affected them. And it was kind of just, you know, eye opening for us.
Paul Zelizer 15:44
I want to get into the specifics of kind of how you set things up, and how do you stay safe during COVID. But just a top level, first of all, tricks, we talked about being trauma informed in the title today, like so many of the people that you're working with have had some disruption, or they're from a community that's marginalized and not normally cared for well, and you're dealing with this all day and you're in, you know, it's a really poignant situation, if anybody doesn't know this, you can go look at the stress tests, I can't remember what the name of them are. But there's good stress and bad stress you stress and distress if you want to get technical about it. And moving is on that list, whether you're moving because you're like, wow, I just bought a new house, and oh, my God, I'm moving. You know, that's, that's what we would call you stress, that would be good in most people's eyes. But a move is stressful in itself. And then when you add something like when maybe there's domestic violence, or there's like a landlord, who's being a jerk, because you're trying to be nice, and there's lead paint here, and I don't want to go to the city. I'm a human, and I want to work with you as a human. And can we do something about this? And they say, goodbye? Right? Get out of here. Or, you know, there's bedbugs, like those are, any move is hard. But those situations, particularly if somebody is from a marginalized community, and there's intergenerational trauma on top of it, like how do you pay attention to some of those issues, that the types of move that you're doing, there's the stress of a move, and then there's all the accumulated stress of who this person is and what they and their families in their communities have been dealing with. And here comes tricks in his team to move their stuff that may be one of the more poignant and stressful moments in their life. How do you do that? Well,
Trix Kirkpatrick 17:37
I think a top most a big thing that people really latch on to when they work with us, I think is just factually our communication, and ability to, you know, offer resourceful support, that would be the top that would be the top priority. That's our top priority. And that's what, you know, the feedback that we get from clients, but on our end, right, it's just part of it is, is being a diverse team in itself. I have an operations manager, their name is Shawn, and they definitely have been super supportive. In terms of being able to help me catch up and maintaining communication and maintaining, like relationships with our clients, especially clients that, you know, might not might not want to talk to me or my I might not, you know, better serve as well as they would or vice versa. But I think when it comes down to it, having a diverse team, who, if it's not me, someone else understands how to work with the accommodations that our clients need. I think that really has been the crux of our, our success, or our ability to support these folks, because I hear this I hurt I something I thought I think about a lot since I've grown up. And something I you know, failed to mention before is that my parents, I grew up with deaf parents. So I grew up as a child of deaf adults. And something that is often repeated, through my experiences, and I know is repeated within the experiences of like minority communities is is the importance of working with folks that, you know, that look like you are folks that understand that reflection of yourself. And so I think understanding the experiences of of these communities has been so important to be able to empathize and relate and provide the tools that they need to succeed they're moving because because moving is your right so stressful. And and there's a really great, really great New York Times article that To it to have just the stresses around moving in the psychology of moving, and how, you know, moving, moving prior to moving people can feel like trapped in their situations and people can feel frozen. And either people are super super, you know, in a, like the fight mode or their fight or flight mode, or they're just frozen in fear, like we've just been there and we are just there, let them know that someone is on their side, you know, it's, it's, it's more than just us picking up their items and moving it's, it's us picking them up and moving them with care and like support and being there for every process of the way. If they have questions if they have, you know, if they need any guidance to be able to give that we can get them to be able to just help them succeed.
Paul Zelizer 20:59
What a beautiful suggestion and listeners you know about my spiritual highlighter. If you're new to the show, I like to like pull out my spiritual highlighter and make sure you notice and that idea of having a diverse team and being able to have more than one way of relating as an organization or a company and you you talked about ATRIX as diversity, having diversity on your team is such a huge gift and not expecting that one person's way of being and style and embodied experience is going to be the right fit for everybody. And just speaks over and over again to a through line that we've heard in these interviews. So just want to circle that and agree like 10,000%, and thanks for naming that
21:49
trade. Yeah, for sure.
Paul Zelizer 21:52
So let's do this in a moment, I want to come back and hear how you work with people, how people find you, and all the good entrepreneurial things. Before we do that, I want to take a break and hear a word from our sponsor, do you have a business that is about making the world a better place, and you want to grow in terms of both your impact and your income? If you do, one of the best things I know is podcasting. And let me tell you why. The average podcast episode is 42 minutes and 43 seconds. Think about that for a minute, you have some time to go into the nuances like Trix is doing today. It's not like a 13 word Instagram meme, a 13 second, Facebook ads video. podcast listeners are really interested in new ideas. Their early adaptors is the technical name for it, right? They look for new ideas. And they tend to be natural leaders in their networks. So people look to them for new ideas. And they use podcasts to find those new ideas. They're more interested in new ideas and they make more money. That's a combination that you don't find and many other paths. So you can leverage that by being a guest like tricks is today, where you can be host I happen to be in the host seat today. Or you can do both. Whichever way you're thinking about growing and impact business, I really encourage you to think about could podcasting. knowing who's listening and knowing you have time to go into the depth and nuance of your particular impact project story. If you think podcasting might be something that could help you get your message out there and grow your impact and grow your income. We're printers has a podcast access team will help you learn how to do that. You can find out more by going to a where printers.com forward slash podcast dash success. And thank you to everybody who's in the podcast success team and help sponsor this podcast. Citrix in the second part of the show, we like to joke about putting on our entrepreneurial glasses. So okay, we got, like, how you're doing it and how this came to be some of the trauma informed steps you take and how you think about that. Talk to us, like just right now on the ground. Like, how many moves a month are you doing? How do people find you, like just unpack it a little bit for us as a social enterprise?
Trix Kirkpatrick 24:19
Yeah, for sure. Um, since since we've started we've done about over 500 moves. We were
Paul Zelizer 24:28
like since April, right?
Trix Kirkpatrick 24:30
Yes, since April. During the summer, we definitely did a lot more moves than we're doing right now. As we head into the winter, right. I think during the winter, we've been hitting around around like 50 clients a month. But during the summer, I think we were doing two maybe three moves a day. And it's per team, sorry, per team and we had like at 1.3 or four teams going out at the same time. So this summer was pretty,
Paul Zelizer 25:00
like 10 moves a day or something like that?
Trix Kirkpatrick 25:03
Yeah, um, that might be an overshoot. But yeah, I don't think I don't think that's an Yeah, no, during our peak week, I think we definitely were doing that it was kind of wild. And right now we're doing about two or three moves a day or trying to hit that goal. During the winter, it's definitely slowed down. But the definitely the request for emergency moves hasn't necessarily slowed down. We've, we're pretty, we're pretty active on Facebook. That's, I think how we got our biggest momentum was via the queer exchange on Chicago, exchange on Facebook, just word of mouth on Facebook, friends, sharing our story or sharing our company with their friends. And I think at one point, I'm trying to think how long, about about a month or two, like the August September range, we were getting booked. So many times, just from word of mouth, we we weren't super active on advertising, because we were so overwhelmed with, you know, requests coming in just because friends were talking about us to other friends. But in terms of our emergency moves, and the partnerships we have with housing programs, we generally have have worked with some of these housing programs for the last few months, also through word of mouth, but now through word of mouth, within the house and programs. And we typically serve about five to 10 moves within the housing programs that we work with per month, that number is kind of growing as as a as a word of mouth. And as our, you know, our referrals within those programs continue. And we've done at least two to three emergency moves per month. And in terms of emergency moves, how it typically works for us is that we we offer, either sliding scale moves to folks who just need a little bit extra support, or we had started this funding pool for emergency moves, where the only thing we really walk away with is a breakeven cost. So just covering the operational overhead of doing these emergency moves. And in the future, the hope, I think, is that we create kind of a mutual aid exchange, that would be safe. But right now, right now, of course, it's smarter, just have professionals working on emergency moves, especially because of both physical and mental safety for our workers, and the people who participate in them. But we, we just get talked about by different programs, to other programs. And that's that's been a big way that people have found us. I mean, we have a website, we have an Instagram, we have a Facebook, but word of mouth has been so powerful for people to hear about us. Because like last week, even we got a request from someone all the way in Colorado who's moving to Chicago. And they started a GoFundMe, which has been shared within some of their friends here in Chicago and someone through there someone through their Go Fund Me, mentioned us as a company, because and they even mentioned this on their GoFundMe. But there's no moving company that really helps people pick up like some of the pieces that they're struggling and pick up and moving them and relocating them to a different space that would just be safer for them, both physically and or mentally. And they kind of exhausted a lot of resources and reaching out to like housing programs or programs in Chicago. And I don't know what program mentioned us, but someone mentioned us to the client all the way in Colorado. And so I think that just kind of speaks to not not necessarily just how people find out about us, but how important this work is, and how how much of a need there is for this work to be done.
Paul Zelizer 29:14
This intersection of like being queer owned, right, that's that's one part of where it seems like there's a lot of energy and enthusiasm about sharing your story. And then this piece around. We're calling it trauma informed or working in difficult situations. Like I've never heard of a moving company like either of those things, but you put them together like is there anything else like have you done any looking? Is there any moving company like a move to remember?
Trix Kirkpatrick 29:43
Not that Not that I've seen that is so focused in in both intersections. We've heard from clients before that there's like a couple moving companies that you can request emergency move his services through, but you're required Typically won't be answered within, like, you have to book them a couple months or a few months in advance, right? That that's something that when I helped someone out of eviction in in March, they mentioned that to us. And, and you know, emergencies Don't, don't wait around two or three months, most of the time,
Paul Zelizer 30:21
90 days from now, please
Trix Kirkpatrick 30:23
write like, and there, there are other really powerful like queer companies, a couple of them in New York. dimensional moving, and silverfox got mentioned in in one of the, I think now this. And they're they're, they're very focused on being queer, queer, owned, and working with the queer community. But in terms of the intersections of, you know, really diving in, and working with low income households, and working with folks that have, you know, either accessibility commendations that they need to, like be provided or service with during their move, I haven't yet really come across another moving company that is so focused on what we are trying to do, honestly, and trying to shift, you know, the moving industry and its landscape.
Paul Zelizer 31:26
I haven't yet come across somebody who's doing this, pay attention to that listeners, sometimes people will say, How do I grow something, Paul, I want to help people. And, and the ideas are talking about while they're good ideas, there's a lot of other examples I can think of, you know, even if I'm not that familiar with space, there's like, Oh, you know, there's this company in this company. And this one does that. And this one does that. And I can think of half a dozen or dozen examples of something that's pretty similar. And the person will say, Well, you know, it's not really like that, because it's different. But the difference is, you know, if you're somebody who's not super, super, super super, in that space, they're gonna sound pretty similar. And in here, we have a situation, like, just deep out to you tricks. And hopefully, listeners, you can hear the wisdom here, something that is really different, and most people haven't heard. And it's not surprising to me that your profits went up five or 600%, in the first couple of months, because this is not typical. And the idea of doing something that is, is needed, and is serving a population that hasn't been served, I can't emphasize enough how helpful that can be to get traction. Otherwise, you're kind of swimming in waters where there's a lot of other people in crowded waters make for harder business growth. So talk to us a little bit tricks like how do you fund this? Right? So like, that's always a significant question. We get on aware of printers like Okay, I get it, it's super cool. I get what they're doing and how they're doing it. But like, how do you make a company that's moving? significant number of low income clients and clients that, you know, take a little more, we might use the word touch or care, or tension or time or some combination of all those things like, all of that, on a heart and impact level is beautiful. How do you make it work on entrepreneurial level?
Trix Kirkpatrick 33:32
Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And I think people always come back to that question, because at the end of the day, you know, we want to keep the lights on and also just keep ourselves sustained. When we started, we started a small funding pool for emergency moves. And that was super helpful to start us off. But to keep us to keep us going, honestly, what it comes down to, is just maintaining sort of a threshold of what what we can provide in terms of size and scale or emergency new services. And that's been that's been sort of enough for us to be able to allocate, you know, part of what we profit and part of what we what we make off of our general, you know, clientele to be able to,
Paul Zelizer 34:30
is that like a percentage of the total moves you do.
Trix Kirkpatrick 34:33
Yeah. I think since we started, especially after I really looked at the numbers, about about 10% of, you know, out of all the moves are done in the emergency moves and housing programs we do have worked with about 10% of them fall within the emergency moves and science scale, and the housing program range. And I think our goal is about our goal will be 25 when we grow But it's a similar model to it was based off of a similar model to kind of, you know, mental health services are sliding scale. Because I talked to different, there was no guidance for you know, the moving industry. So I talked to professionals of other industries that offer sliding scale services to low income households or, or accessible services to folks that needed it. And other you know, health, some health, like mental health professionals offer about, you know, the 25% range for sliding scale news. So,
Paul Zelizer 35:39
again, just paying attention listeners, that there's a deep desire to be a service and awareness of like, I don't know, tricks, I'm gonna throw out a number. If you were doing 90% sliding scale moves, might it be fair to say that a move to remember is going to be pretty hard to keep going and a long term sustainable take care of its people kind of a way? Is that fair to say?
Trix Kirkpatrick 36:02
Yeah, that'd be fair to say,
Paul Zelizer 36:04
right. And I see that sometimes, because social entrepreneurs we saw on help them be someone to give. But sometimes, you know, the entrepreneur, part of social entrepreneur doesn't get attention. And people are like, Oh, my God, I'm exhausted pollen, I will talk to me, like how's it work in the same kind of conversation we just have. And you know, you unpack and it's like, well, they're giving away 95% not giving it away, but they're doing 95% more in the impact realm. And there's not enough to take care of the humans. And that's not sustainable either. So just whatever the percentages are, whatever your equation is, please take care of yourself and your people, because you can have all the ideals in the world. But if you're burning out your people, and overworking them, and not letting paying them a living wage, I'm gonna say you're not, you know, I'm not real impressed with you as a social enterprise. I'm just going to say that. So, tricks if you were gonna say to people that I'm thinking about and our listener poll, one is the young entrepreneur who has an idea, maybe like, where you were, when you were in the boot camp, like, like a year, can you believe that was probably like a year ago, I can't believe 18 months ago, whatever, right? Like, way back when you were a young and track, right, 80 years ago,
Trix Kirkpatrick 37:28
but so quick, and so long ago,
Paul Zelizer 37:32
that things move fast in the COVID change happen. Somebody who's earlier on the journey, and they have an idea, but it's not like fully operational yet. And like that, they really are on fire about, you know, making a difference in a certain community. And they're working out, like, some of the details of how's this gonna work? Like you were, when you were in the boot camp? What would you say to a person at that phase in development?
Trix Kirkpatrick 38:02
So many things.
38:05
Uh, I think, gosh,
Trix Kirkpatrick 38:10
to someone in that phase, honestly, the biggest thing, besides what we talked about, in the beginning of, you know, this podcast of, of self care, really just comes down to, you know, believing in the dream or just believing in, in that, that passion, like Believe in yourself, because, you know, when I, when I started doing this, I would hear, I would hear older business professionals kind of kind of look at my structure, look at my idea. And at the end of the day, say, okay, but but what piece of the pie, are you cutting for yourself and imply and really them not cutting a large enough piece for myself, and, and as a social entrepreneur, and I'm sure other people relate to this, you know, like, it's, it's not about, it's not about that, at the end of the day. And I think that we're headed to a space where it's, it's not about that, and then companies with a social impact really get highlighted in, in our world now. But really, just, you know, just having that passion is enough to get you started and keeping, keeping yourself staying secure in yourself that the work that you're doing is important and will be successful, I think is is so important to, to latch on to. Because you'll you'll hear from people that XYZ, it doesn't make sense, especially if you're trying to you know, start something completely new and an industry that doesn't have have what you're trying to create. You're going to get turned down and honestly you just got to Keep going and just keep pushing forward. Because if it's something that you're passionate about, it's something that's worth having passion about usually.
Paul Zelizer 40:10
And what about to our LGBTQ plus listeners who, let's say, you know, they do some they have a side gig or they do volunteer work, but they're, you know, like this, it's a side thing, or it's their volunteer work and their pay their bills in one way that maybe isn't particularly impact oriented, they're grateful for have a job. They're grateful to work in an organization or whatever it is. But they're in there. They haven't synced up their values and their work life yet. And there's some part of them that would like that. And they're saying, damn, look, what this guy's liquid, this human liquid these people are doing. And we have to remember, right? That's inspiring. I'd like to have that. But that's not my embodied reality right now. But I'd like to have that what would you say to that person?
Trix Kirkpatrick 41:03
You know, first most. First off, in some spaces, it really is difficult to embody that there are workspaces, I think, don't necessarily embrace that culture, a lot of things have changed in even just in the last few years, and so, first off, honestly, I, I would say to an LGBT listener, where they don't feel secure, and bringing that to a workspace through your safety comes first. And there's no shame in that whatsoever. But if if there is an opportunity to embody that and bring that, I know, before I did this work, I was always passionate about the places I was at, or working at, about bringing some sort of, you know, embodiment of what I bring to the table in terms of making a space more diverse. And, and you'll be so surprised at how, how quick people will listen if you just lift your voice. And, and just speak up. Um, when I was when I was working as a barista, even, we had like gender coded bathrooms, where you had to ask for a bathroom code to use, you know, the specific bathroom of the gender you presented as I guess, and like, you know, I mentioned that across other other things that really could change within the structure of the work that out the work that I was at the employment I was at, and they they're like, okay, like, this is a cool idea, not sure how impactful this will be. In a week after I made that like presentation to the regional managers, we had a client who came in as my store manager for a bathroom code, and then had to come back up from where the bathrooms were to tell them, that code didn't work for them. Because that wasn't there. That wasn't their gender, that they, you know, that they were assumed to have. And my manager was like, oh, shoo, this is actually really important to think about now. So honestly, just lift your voice and feel, feel free to, to speak up is what I would say to, you know, the LGBT listeners of this podcast, just because, you know, if you don't, if you don't speak up people, people don't know what kind of guidance they need, or, or the fact that they're more voices than the one that they're, that's their own in the room.
Paul Zelizer 43:40
One of the questions that I'm thinking about tricks, you're moving company, in the middle of a pandemic, and you're working with people who are, you know, have, due to health disparities and other disparities have pretty high risk, right? How are you all thinking about taking care of yourself taking care of your clients, keeping people safe, in the midst of this pandemic, when you're showing up in really stressful and hard circumstances?
Trix Kirkpatrick 44:09
Yeah, in the, in the beginning of the pandemic, even when, when there wasn't a lot of information about it, I was I was a big stickler with the team about wearing masks and maintain a mess. Since then, besides just you know, that basics and, and having sanitary supplies. A big thing that we've offered clients, whether that's clients who are immunocompromised, or just clients who, even this week, for example, we're working with a client who's who's had to move back home before moving their things. And so we, we arranged them mailing us a key so that way we can, you know, get into their space, but contactless moves has been a big thing that we offer. So that way, folks, especially folks who are at high risk don't need to be there for them. We typically set these up through virtual walkthroughs, or virtually communicating with these clients while we're in their space, if it's their first time, and, and, you know, we, we do our best to, to maintain safety in that regard, especially for folks that really need it or really can't interact with people who are essential workers, we're pretty serious to about getting tested every two weeks. And, you know, as we grow, as we grow bigger looking to next summer, one thing that we're discussing and thinking about is creating regional teams, where, you know, we have, we have one team that services the north and west side of Chicago, or just the North, the North, northwest side, and then another team that services, the Central and South Side of Chicago. So, you know, you know, if someone does get sick, which is not the not the hope, or we would hope to avoid that if someone does get sick, we can minimize, you know, contact tracing, and keep our clients safe and keep them informed.
Paul Zelizer 46:13
So, five 600% growth in your first year, congratulations. And I'm not surprised you're doing some really, really good work. But Congratulations, I don't want to minimize the work that you've done. Like, what's on your radar going forward with the move? That's like coming out strong? I think we could call it that tricks. Yeah. Like, what's on your radar in terms of 2021? And beyond with that kind of growth? Like what are you thinking about,
Trix Kirkpatrick 46:45
where there's, there's so many things that are on my head, and we're a mood to remember can go, we definitely are trying to venture to fund fundraise for more capital in terms of just to start a moving company to start a moving company, it's, it's pretty, it's a pretty tough venture that takes an investment and we have been so fortunate to be able to just do this from our bootstraps and keep running. Something else that we're looking to start developing is we we would like to develop a podcast, mainly a podcast, it's not even necessarily related to move in. But moreso in terms of having conversations with, you know, city officials, clients from housing programs, clients, we've worked with, or, or folks within the nonprofit realm in talking about topics like affordable housing, and the legal system and and information on how to provide support to survivors of domestic violence or navigating the legal system, or folks who are trying to navigate the legal system in terms of understanding their rights as a Chicago tenant. Like that's a big thing that's on our radar for 2021 that we want to start exploring right away. And I think a third thing, too, that's been on my mind as a as a passion project that might take a longer, longer road in 2021 2022, was developing educational models for folks that experience out of the ordinary moves or their first time moves, to help empower and motivate them to understand the movement field. Part of that is because we know that there's other cities with similar audiences that we serve in Chicago that we we can't hop from city to city necessarily to help everyone. But I think about 25 to 35% of our clients we've had this year have been first time like it was their first time experience a moving company, especially moving company like us. And creating like some sort of educational model that people can access to kind of help guide them through their way is something that is a side passion project. And something that would take a little bit of investment but it's something that I really would like to develop.
Paul Zelizer 49:13
I'm not usually in the prediction business tricks, but I will share listeners before we hit the record button tricks was telling me about podcasting. And, you know, listeners, I like to joke My name is Paul and I'm podcast obsessed. Part of the reason we're here with drinks and learning about a move to remember is do the fabulous episode with Dr. Henderson and we the unhoused. The iOS experience starting a podcast about the unhoused folks he started it in LA and all sorts of things started to happen that he didn't expect like people flying was it from Denmark, I believe in New York City coming in so I don't know what you're doing but it's better than what we got going on here and we need to find out about it and tricks heard that episode. And that's part of it. I'm gonna make a prediction tricks that if you do start that podcast, and I sure hope you do that, you're gonna start to get some inquiries from places you never expect, not just the other side of Chicago, but the other side of the world. I'm not usually prediction business, but I'm gonna make that prediction. And I hope you start that podcast. And please let me and us know how he can help.
Trix Kirkpatrick 50:19
Definitely, you'll definitely be the first to know.
Paul Zelizer 50:22
Cool. So I can hang out talk to you all day tricks, but I'm not going to do that to you or to our listeners, if there was something you were hoping we were going to get to in our conversation today, and we haven't gotten to it. Or if there's something you'd like to leave our listeners with an actionable step or something to think about as they're coming away from this interview.
50:43
What would that be?
Trix Kirkpatrick 50:51
I think, uh, I mean, I talked about this, you know, within the psychology of moving and within the clientelism we've worked with, but I think a big thing to just take away from as a whole is, is understanding the importance of serving your clients in need and understanding how to put yourself in their shoes. You know, for us, as I mentioned before, we we get people who say often like, Oh, you know, it doesn't matter if you're LGBTQ, or if you're unclear on company, as long as you do the job. Well, of course, you want to do the job well, regardless of who you're serving. But I think it's, it's so so important to understand, like, as an owner, or just as a manager, or as your your place, how important it is to ensure that if you don't, if you don't share the same experience as your client, how important it is to listen to them, and get to understand their experiences, to just be better informed.
Paul Zelizer 52:07
Trix, congratulations on all the growth all the people you're helping and thank you so much for being on the show and sharing your story with us.
Trix Kirkpatrick 52:16
Thank you for having me.
Paul Zelizer 52:18
That's all the time we have for today. listeners. Thank you so much for listening. Before we go, gentle reminder, we dropped new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. And if you have an idea of something you'd like to see us talk about on the podcast, please go to the web printers website, go to our contact page, take a look at the things we're looking for. And if we haven't covered it, and you've got an idea, and you check those boxes, yeah, I think this would really work. please get in touch with us and let us know your idea. For now I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in this point in time. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.