Not So Small
Running a small business is anything but small. In each episode our host, Sam Bauman, asks small business owners about their challenges, triumphs, and the passion that keeps them going. Through this, Not So Small seeks to spotlight and strengthen the small businesses that are dedicated to their community and care about more than the bottom line.
Not So Small
College Muscle Movers: Cameron Gillette
In this episode of Not So Small, we sit down with Cameron Gillette (Cammie G), co-owner of College Muscle Movers. Cammie shares how he focuses on fostering a culture built on trust, adaptability, and continuous learning. From creating a positive work environment that values every team member’s contribution, to embracing challenges like expanding into a 13,000-square-foot warehouse and transitioning from paper to digital systems, Cammie talks about the lessons learned along the way. Tune in to hear how Cameron turns the everyday challenges of moving into opportunities for growth and connection, proving that even the most hands-on work can be elevated by thoughtful leadership.
Guest Info
Community Shoutout
Host & Show Info
- Host Name: Sam Bauman (she/her)
- About the Host: Sam is the President of Mellowlark Labs, a Twin Cities-based small business consulting agency. She has a masters degree in counseling psychology, a field she worked in for several years before applying her skills in business, and is certified in Organization Development.
Podcast Website
Sound Editing By: Adam Rondeau
Podcast Art By: Andy Bauman (website)
Hey everyone and welcome back to not so Small, the podcast where we ask small business owners the big questions. This week I got to sit down with Cameron Gillette, known as Cammie G by his fans. Cameron is a co owner of College Muscle Movers, a local moving company. And I actually have had the privilege of working with Kami in the past. So it was really fun to get to sit down with him in this different context and talk about his experience as a business owner. One of the things that I have witnessed from Kami and that I know others feel as well, is his ability to create a really positive work environment and to really build trust and encourage good communication between employees and supervisors. So we talked a little bit about that. In our conversation we also talked about the double edged sword of adaptability in a business which can be so important but also can cause challenges. And I'm really excited for you to hear this. I hope you enjoy it. So you came to owning a business from a little bit of a different angle in that you kind of joined an already existing company versus starting one from scratch on your own. So the way that you answer this question can either speak to college muscle movers as a whole or your experience when you entered into the space of owning college muscle movers. But I'm curious, what is the main problem that you as a business owner sought out to solve and then, so reflecting on the past and then also thinking about today, what are the main problems that you find yourself looking to solve today?
Cameron Gillette:I have two. It's a really good question. It was fun to kind of reflect on it because that's changed over the years. And I don't know, I guess I wouldn't think that type of goal would change, like what is the problem? But it has. And I remember in 2015, or it was before that and when I was starting to take on management activities, my main goal was to find like, was to create a really fun environment for the employees to work in. Moving is moving takes a really unique individual who wants to do kind of really physical and manual labor. And so innately you're signing up for something that's really hard. And you know, you get paid not that much money to do that work. And so to want that a lot of hard work for not that much money. You throw in the aspect of the job of the customer service because you're inside these people's homes and you're handling their belongings, whether they cost a lot or they mean a lot to the individual, it doesn't really matter. The stakes are Always really high. And yeah, I was one of those individuals and I was like, wow, I love this job so much. Like, I wonder if there's other people that would maybe like it as much as I do if I could round off the edges or take some of the harshness away from how challenging some working here was at that time when I first started. And so that was the first thing that I wanted to set out to change with our business that has evolved over time to a more customer focused goal of just wanting to provide a good service. That ultimately is the outcome of what we do and why we do it, is we want customers to have a good experience in their transition between their residents. And it seems like every customer has some horror story of a moving company. Things were damaged or their belongings were held hostage or something. It's not that complicated. These people just want to have good people move their stuff, have some personal connection to the people who are doing it, and have it be done and done without damage. And so as I've worked to grow our operation, I've tried to kind of simplify that goal and just keeping that in focus of just doing what we are set out to do and why customers would want to seek out our services.
Sam Bauman:I want to go back to something you said earlier. You said, I love moving so much and I feel like that's a really rare or unexpected perspective to have. What do you think it is about you or about the people that work at college muscle movers that allows them to truly enjoy the work rather than just coming to get a paycheck?
Cameron Gillette:I don't think it's me, but there are some components about me that make that something that I enjoy. And so like anybody who plays sports or who's gone through two a day practices, who's kind of like intentionally signed up for that type of suffering is gonna like this kind of work. Like you're sacrificing yourself in that moment to do something challenging and you get a feeling of gratification or reward at the end of doing something difficult. So I think a lot of people sign up, can get on board with that. But what. There was something around the time of like, it must have been late 2013 or 2014. I got really good at interacting with customers and just observing like input versus output. What, what would I say and how customers reacted. And I just got really good at like mastering this interaction with customers who would hire us. And really predictably and most of the time I'd be able to do these services and end up with a customer who wants to give me a hug at the end of the service. And if you're ever in the neighborhood, stop on by. We'd love to say hi. And that feeling of making someone's day has always stuck with me. I believe in that. I believe in that type of work making a difference in someone else's life. And, you know, I'm not really doing it for me, I'm doing it for someone else. And how that kind of has a circular effect of coming back to me to be motivating to me and to seek out more of that.
Sam Bauman:How do you think that those the traits that you need to have to be happy in this work of doing, moving, working with customers, doing the hard work. How do you think that impacts the overall culture of the organization?
Cameron Gillette:Can you repeat that question?
Sam Bauman:Yeah. So, you know, every job kind of requires a different skill set. Right. And you're saying that some of the things that make a person good at and enjoy working at college muscle movers are that excitement about working hard, willingly, you know, suffering or putting in that effort, and then also the joy that comes from making somebody's day and serving a customer. So what does that look like on a cultural level for college muscle movers? What kind of company is it? Because of those things.
Cameron Gillette:We'Ve gone through a few rounds of reflecting or refining our core values, and one that has always hung on there is adaptability. The ability to change, to be comfortable and work inside of fluid working dynamics or situational dynamics has always been something. And I think that's out of. If there's a common denominator across all of our employees. And in our culture, that's probably. It is, like, people's comfort to exist in changing circumstances. And I would say, as we've expanded, we've come to learn that, like, not everyone needs, like, all of those components to, like, hard work, to be really inspired to make a difference in somebody's day. We really look at, like, what. What is the strength that this person brings to the team and just support them in that strength and use teammates to support them in the areas that they're not. So, like, amongst the team, we'd have three individuals that are really good at, like, details and organization, somebody who's good at leading and customer communication, and people who, like the physicality of the type of work doesn't have all those characteristics, don't necessarily have to be embedded in each individual that works here.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, I think this is a good lead into another question that I Have. Which is what keeps you and your team motivated when things get hard. And I'd like to hear about sort of the mover employees, but then also your experience as a business owner. What keeps you motivated through hard times?
Cameron Gillette:We've had a lot of hard times. I. I think what keeps us motivated, it's kind of this ebb and flow between our vision of what we see. The big picture being of all of this work at certain times and then at other times, I think during difficult periods is not losing sight or giving up on that big version, but just bringing it back to the day today. And. And just say, what does it take today to be successful?
Sam Bauman:And so breaking it down a little bit.
Cameron Gillette:Yeah. And not. We're not saving lives in our work. People's lives aren't on the line. And so I think we run the risk sometimes of taking ourselves a little too seriously with our goals. And that can just add to a weight of feeling overwhelmed during periods of, Yeah, I don't know, business headwinds or challenges or just difficult phases in the seasons of our work. And so, like, on a day like today, you know, we don't have any, like, crazy challenges, but it's like five degrees outside, and our movers have to go out there. Like, our focus doesn't have to be any more than just the next time we get inside to pad and wrap somebody's belongings. Right. And just breaking things down to their smaller components to what is digestible and.
Sam Bauman:Achievable at that time as a business owner on that macro level, when things are challenging, what keeps you personally motivated and invested in continuing your role at college? Muscle movers in building this business, my teammates, every.
Cameron Gillette:Everyone that goes from my co owners or our newest hired cleaning technician or muscle mover, you know, we all have a role to play. And when you come into the office and you see that, you know they're here. And our service manager is here, our dispatch manager is here. Yeah, I'm here. And so whether today is good or we're facing a bunch of challenges, like, there's no time like present to just do what needs to be done and knowing that everyone else is doing their part. And so, yeah, I don't know. That communal effect or knowing that if our teammates are doing their part, then all I need to do, all I need to focus on is my part to keep things going and battle through those hard times.
Sam Bauman:It seems like there's a lot of trust inherent in that relationship or set of relationships. You trust other people to do their part. They Trust you to show up and do your part and support them.
Cameron Gillette:Yeah, I think it's probably one of the things that has been the most important ingredient in our growth over the years is trust amongst the different levels of employees. Whether you're, like I said, as entry level mover or you're in upper management, just trusting that those above, around and below you are just doing your part or their part to make each day a success.
Sam Bauman:I mean, trust doesn't just come out of thin air. Right. There's gotta be things that you're doing that you're encouraging others to do to sort of support the building of that kind of trust. Do you have thoughts on like, what those things maybe are or where that comes from?
Cameron Gillette:It's not a foolproof way of ensuring trust happens, but I start with thinking like, well, what would make me trust somebody and start with that with my interactions with employees across the ranks. A lot of that just comes down to just being a good human. How are you doing today? Where you, like, what's coming up for you? Like, where are you headed? What, what's fun to celebrate for you? On the, on the flip side, what, how are you doing? Are you struggling? Is there any way I can help? Yeah, that's a personal kind of take on it. But when it comes to work of, it can be difficult to give trust freely. It feels like it needs to be earned, but having the, like, the benefit of intent or positive intent and leading with that. I do believe that people want to make the right decisions for the right reasons. And so walking with employees with that mindset and yeah. Giving them the benefit of the doubt and if they're wrong, just talking through that with them.
Sam Bauman:You make it sound so easy. I think a lot of people really struggle with that kind of thing when they're running a business. But I think you're right. A lot of it just comes down to empathy and connection.
Cameron Gillette:Yeah. I'll try not to go too deep on this, but I can remember, like with my dad, I'd say he was kind of like a hard driver growing up. We had to do a lot of chores. Things didn't necessarily come easy. And that doesn't paint my childhood like, in a negative light at all. But I can remember growing up and there would be instances in which I wanted or thought I had earned his trust and didn't. And it's like, even today if, like I'm backing up a trailer, like my dad gets out, has me roll the window down and he's like coaching me through how to back up a trailer. And it's like, man, I got it. I know how to do this.
Sam Bauman:Yeah.
Cameron Gillette:Like I was, I've sought his trust in a lot of things and I, you know, it'd be interesting to hear how he would answer that question, but never felt like I got his trust in a lot of these little itty bitty micro ways of a father son dynamic. But I took, I take from that, like if I want people to feel like I do trust them or they have my trust, what would I do differently? And that's just putting it to practice. And that results in a bunch of trial and error and there's a lot of error. And so like maybe like the flip side of that is like forgiveness and understanding to move on when people make mistakes. There's certainly been a lot more failures and success in any of these. Like we talked about culture building, we're talking about trust building. You know, they're not, very little ground is made until mistakes are made. And you have that to go off of in a data point or a reference point to go back to. But I would say it's how you handle those mistakes or those failure points and use them to build something from it as opposed to it just being a failure or a mistake.
Sam Bauman:Well, and you bring up a good point, it's a two way street. Right. You know, you bring what you can to a relationship with an employee or with a colleague and then you just look for that reciprocation and build from there together. And I'm sure there have been times where it hasn't really worked out the way that you hoped it would or you weren't able to build trust.
Cameron Gillette:Yeah. And I would say most of the experience, like in the times that I failed to make trust or build trust with people, those people weren't right for the organization. And that's okay too. Like that's not a personality flaw on their side.
Sam Bauman:It's just a mismatch.
Cameron Gillette:Yeah, it's just a mismatch. And that just means that them not working here, they're one step closer to finding a workplace that does match with them.
Sam Bauman:So we've talked about some of the hard times in owning a business, the ups and the downs, and some of that is not in your control. Some of it's just the ebb and flow of the market and life. But some of it is. I'd love to hear about a time that you chose to take a risk for the Business and what that experience was like. Did it work out, didn't it? What did you learn from it?
Cameron Gillette:I can remember when we moved into our current warehouse space, I wasn't an owner at the time, but I was doing a lot of managerial activity that I was included in conversations that led up to renting this newer and bigger space. So when I think it was our second location, college muscle movers made the jump to no warehouse. Kind of a spread out working facility. We had trucks parked in the alley off University Avenue and the phone and administrative stuff was happening in the lower level of a duplex. We made the jump to a warehouse space that was, I think 1200 square feet. And it was, you know, just kind of gritty. Like the desks are out in the warehouse and we have pallet rack full of boxes and moving supplies. And it had one dock space for one truck. And yeah, were there for four or five years. And then in 2013 we jumped into this space and this is 13,000 square feet. And our company, the company had been steadily growing, but I mean, we significantly added a bun. I don't, I don't remember the exact amounts, but were like doubling or tripling our monthly rent expense. And it, you know, like we. Was it there? Yeah, like it was there and the cash flows and the monies, but like, you know, it wasn't like clear how all that was going to work out. But we knew that we couldn't stay in the space that we wanted and we made the move and things, you know, we just kind of worked through it. It's not as like vague as things just worked out. But we jumped into the space and it took us a couple years to figure out how to use the space. We moved in 13. It wasn't until 2015, that we got our storage vaults up and running that we could actually utilize the space to increase some revenue. But yeah, that was a huge risk and just kind of trusting in the people and the business and your processes to continue on the path that gave us the confidence to consider this decision. You know, it just came down to a yes or no. Like, do we believe this is going to work or not? We did and it ended up working out. Another one would be. Up until 2015, were leasing most of our trucks. And in 2015 we decided to jump into owning our own assets. And that was when we bought a truck. We bought 80 storage vaults and we bought a forklift. And that was a big financial decision at the time to consider you know, like the way that their storage works. You have to have all of those features. You can't just get by with just the truck or just the vaults. So we had to buy all these things, and that was probably the most money we had spent up till that point. And we did it and things were successful. And it certainly took time to refine and actually figure out what the heck we're doing and to be organized with it. But that was another time, at least where we took a financial risk that, yeah, you just aren't certain of the outcome. You make an informed decision, right? We're not guessing, but yeah, one where you just don't know what the outcome.
Sam Bauman:Is going to be. What do you think the role of risk taking is as a business owner?
Cameron Gillette:It's important. I shouldn't say. It's obvious. It felt much easier to take risks 10 years ago when I was a new owner. And now it's a. I think I told you about this in a different conversation that we had that I've been reflecting on. Now that we've. We've built, we have systems, we have a big team, we have equipment, it feels harder to take risks.
Sam Bauman:It's.
Cameron Gillette:It feels like we have to protect kind of what we've built. And that makes it more difficult. Like, I feel like it's easier.
Sam Bauman:You have more to lose.
Cameron Gillette:We have more to lose. Which causes me to feel more conservative in my risk assessment of whatever decisions that we're contemplating.
Sam Bauman:Why is it important to take risks as a business owner.
Cameron Gillette:For growth? You know, for us to grow, we have to go into the areas in our industry that we don't know. And I think to do that, you have to take risks. Risks that you're willing to bet on with your team and your money to unlock the next thing. I don't believe that just staying in a single, well defined lane where things are comfortable can last very long, that at some point it'll run its course. So through every growth cycle, there's a period of risk and like normalization and like, you get normalized to that risk, you refine it, you build on it, and then you walk yourself up to the edge and you take that next jump forward. If we just stayed where were doing what we do, I think people would get bored. So from a growth perspective, I think you have to be taking risks. And just from a freshness perspective of like, I don't think a business can just stay put, stay buoyed up. It would get stagnant, it would drown, it would fizzle. Out if you weren't making movement in some direction.
Sam Bauman:So the growth is maybe also part of what keeps people engaged and excited and motivated in their work.
Cameron Gillette:Yeah, I think most people want to be a part of something that's doing something or going somewhere.
Sam Bauman:Yeah. Having a direction and part of having a direction sometimes means taking risks.
Cameron Gillette:Yeah, I think there's plenty of people that want to align with whatever that direction is. But equally, I think there's a lot of people that are. It's not that they don't care, but just knowing that there is some direction is good enough for them and just that there's comfort or excitement or like in that here's the plan, here's where we're going. And whether or not they get there is less important about just the desired process of growth and movement to expand what we do.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, we've been talking a lot about people, how people work together, how you build relationships. But obviously there's other parts of a business. There are the tools and the systems and the processes that you build and that you implement to support the people. So thinking about college muscle movers, what for your business has been the most impactful in that space and what has it done for you?
Cameron Gillette:I wish I would have learned this a long time ago. I don't know if I could pick a single process or thing that made the biggest impact on the business. But the broader concept of having standard operating procedures, we neglected to build those for a really long time. You know, it was just considered busy work or, you know, I talked about adaptability. This is where adaptability hindered me to some extent, is I was so used to things being fluid and changing that I was afraid to write things down, make rules, concrete plans, create rules. At the time it felt like that introducing that would maybe constrain employees or myself. But by putting things down and saying this is the best way that this task is done, if you're going to do it, this is how it needs to be done. But after many years of things changing and not knowing why they changed, things being forgotten as a part of a process and then not knowing it, and then you circle back for some reason and you look at a process and some piece wasn't done and you say, well, why wasn't this done? And no one has a good answer. No one can remember why it was that we did that thing in the first place. And so we've. Two years ago we kind of went on this warpath to try and document as many of the things that we could to get that up to practice. And it's been extremely helpful for the team. I think just having clarity and expectations. Here's how this is to be done. There's no questions, there's no wiggle room. It gives them complete autonomy to like learn the task, be able to reference like the checklist or the instructions. And yeah, there's no trying to figure it out like experiential learning. That was how we did trainings. And probably the biggest impact of doing these standard operating procedures is being able to train people in. When you hire on a new team member or you experience some turnover and somebody else needs to come on the team, how do you download all of these tasks for them to be successful in the first 90 days? I mean I used to think that it would take us a year to fully onboard somebody because that's how much experience was required to learn all these different tasks. And so having this document library where all of these tasks are outlined checklists or bullet points or if then kind of flowcharts has allowed people to kind of come online much more quickly and be a productive member of the team. Yeah, it's been extremely helpful.
Sam Bauman:And how has it impacted your adaptability?
Cameron Gillette:It really hasn't. It's like only emboldened creativity and decision making. When somebody finds themselves at a crossroad to you know like make a play call that isn't in alignment with the SOP. So for 90, 80% of the situations that an SOP is written for like they will be handled by that. We run into unique circumstances frequently enough that SOP gives us anchor point to say okay, this is different enough, this is unique enough that we should bend a little bit on this policy or you know, the policy doesn't really support this. I think this is the better path. So it gives us like anchor point in our ability to be creative and responsive to one off scenarios or situational circumstances that the policy or that constriction of feeling like rules keeping us from being adaptable, it gives us anchor point to make I think an even better decision because we know what, why, where we're going outside of our normal policy for a customer or an item.
Sam Bauman:So the adaptability is just more appropriately placed. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Is there any one specific thing that you want to highlight that's worked well for you? I mean, I guess you talked about putting together those SOPs, that's a fairly specific system.
Cameron Gillette:The other thing that stands out in my Mind is us just going fully digital with our working infrastructure. When I started were all paper, just paper everywhere. And you know, obviously these documents were printed off of our computers but it was weird existing in both like a digital space where computers were as good as they were in 2012 but not technology at the time wasn't really good enough to bring that to like the on site experience or like how we interacted with our service teams. And so to be able to like ditch the paper where were printing each service packet for each job every day and having to assemble them with the correct documents and go fully digital was another really big change that were able to make that simplified a lot of our workflows.
Sam Bauman:Were there growing pains with that transition? I think people can find it hard to let go of the paper. It's so tangible it's not going to not work the way you expect it to. It has other problems. But I think that can be a point of contention for people when they're considering moving away from paper.
Cameron Gillette:Yeah, there certainly were some speed bumps along the way finding the right programs like documents, signatures before services went through. Yeah, just trial and error of what products would work best for us to do what we needed them to do. And I believe at the onset we created more work for ourselves to kind of build everyone's trust in the digital infrastructure. We were also, we maintained our paper like route. So were, when we made the decision to implement it, were doing both systems just as a fail safe.
Sam Bauman:What do you feel like you got out of moving away from paper? What were the upsides?
Cameron Gillette:Well, our employees certainly interact with the digital like I don't know, admin type of stuff better. They, you know, we're employing kids who were born after 2000 now. It's pretty crazy. So they've grown up with it. The live nature of how things can exist. So we see as soon as a job has started, we're able to see as soon as a job has ended. It just gives you much more visibility inside of our systems as to what is where. And I think it's easier to catch mistakes or issues in advance because you don't. The problem doesn't physically have to be in front of you. You can have systems to flag an issue. And so it gives you much more clarity throughout the workflows to know where things are at and if things need attention or just monitoring the workflows.
Sam Bauman:Yeah, yeah, that's great. So you're coming up on almost 10 years of business ownership. And I happen to know you, and I know that you are a lifelong learner. So I would love for you to share some of your advice with our listeners. What, you know, what are the things that have worked for you in owning a business? The words of wisdom that you would impart on people who. Or maybe in a similar position.
Cameron Gillette:I think the biggest thing that has helped me along the way, it started with this desire to not stop learning. So, like, well, what does that mean? I got into stoic philosophy, and that's been a source of information for me to use as a resource to, like, measure myself and my responses to things that are good and bad inside of our business. But as I tried to improve, the thing that was really challenging on this pursuit of learning is like, well, how do you know what you want to learn? Or how do you get wisdom that's applicable for what you're going through now? And there was. It was probably a period of four years from 2017. Yeah, somewhere around 21 or 22 that things started to click. And it was like I had to go out and just explore stuff. And I had this avenue into like, reading stoic philosophy. A mentor of mine gave me a book, so that was like my jumping off point. But I needed to, like, just go out and find places to learn from. And so I subscribed to probably six daily emails, daily newsletters from a variety of sources. Business focused, markets focused, leadership focused, psychology focused that I read once a day. I've come across a couple of podcasts about leadership and business that I listen to weekly. I read stoicism and then I love reading about history. And so the biggest thing on this learning journey is creating the finding the things for me to absorb the wisdom I can in the moment. Oftentimes at this phase of my journey, the answer to a problem that I'm facing comes to me coincidentally through one of these avenues that I've found. It can be overwhelming to be searching for answer that you're looking for that applies to you or applies to the challenge that you're looking at and know where to go and find that. That find a solution that resonates with you. When you do the work to set up yourself to kind of constantly be learning. There's some gravity that pushes answers to you at the right time. It's kind of difficult to explain. But as long as you're exposing yourself to new ideas, new ways of looking at things, and you do it regularly through sheer volume, the answers you're looking for will percolate to the top without you needing to go looking for those answers individually.
Sam Bauman:I love that. That's my kind of advice. There's nothing a single book, a single model or method that's gonna have all of the answers to the problems that you encounter as a business owner or in life. And so it sounds like what you're saying you would ultimately advise is just creating more of a lifestyle that brings that learning to you and brings those opportunities for insights to you.
Cameron Gillette:Yeah, a lifestyle is a good word. Anything that I take in, it's like, well, how can this apply to the friendships in my life? How can this apply to my marriage? How can this apply and the things that really move the needle end up being applicable across the board. Yeah, it's not too often that things that a nugget that I find that really changes things at work also doesn't apply to friendships, relationships or my marriage.
Sam Bauman:So turning back to college muscle movers, what's a current project that you want to pitch right now or what is new for college muscle movers that's exciting that you want to share with our listeners.
Cameron Gillette:A couple years ago we set out on a mission to have to improve our Google score. And you know that can feel a little bit transactional in nature just like we just gotta get a bunch of five star reviews. But having this verbiage of like just creating raving fans brings kind of that focus of wanting to improve our Google score to into some action oriented items of just like the purpose of like when we're on the job, like we're there to move somebody's stuff and not damage it. But at the same time we want them to feel like wow, these guys were great. These guys were everything I was looking for in the moving experience. And so having customers receive really good service, therefore they will be raving fans of our brand and therefore are more likely to leave us a five star rating on Google.
Sam Bauman:So just really keeping with the problem that you're currently solving, like you said at the beginning of our conversation of just providing a really good service and making somebody's day on what could end up being a really stressful situation if they don't have good support. So one of the big goals of this podcast is to encourage community and networking of small businesses. And we've spent today talking about you and your business and your experiences. But I want to leave our conversation by giving you the opportunity to highlight another business that you feel makes a positive impact in the community that you'd like to give a shout out today.
Cameron Gillette:We take all of our small vehicles to this place called Lloyd's Automotive off Grand Avenue. And that place has been there for a really long time. I think it started back in the 50s and 60s. And I recently just changed ownership to this guy named Nick. He worked. He started there as a mechanic and grew up there and now is an owner. And every one of the people I interact there, they're just really nice. And the difference that I feel there, the service that I would describe that you get is when your vehicle needs something fixed or remedied. Oftentimes they're telling you what they can do as opposed to telling you just like what needs to be done. They'll actually make repairs. They won't just take a broken part and replace it and charge you for the labor. They'll work with you on what, like the severity of the issue with the vehicle. And they'll have a conversation with you about, like, you can probably get six months down the road with this or not. And I don't know if go to a car dealership, you just feel like you're getting raked over the coal sometimes with, this is what's wrong. This is the cost. Excuse me. This is the cost of the new part, and this is what your good bill is going to be. It just has that small customer service feeling where you just. You feel like you're working with somebody who cares. And we've been working with them for, I don't know, since 2012. And they've always been. Been reliable in their work and fair with their prices. And every time we go there, I look forward to seeing the guys there. And yeah, just a lot of trust in the service that you're getting from them.
Sam Bauman:Awesome. I was going to bring up the word trust again, too. We didn't talk about trust and customers, but that's obviously a huge thing, too. And it sounds like Lloyd's is pretty good at building trust with its customers.
Cameron Gillette:They are very good.
Sam Bauman:Cool. Any last words, last thoughts that you'd like to share?
Cameron Gillette:No, I think we. We covered a lot.
Sam Bauman:Well, thank you so much, Cami. It was great talking to you.
Cameron Gillette:Thank you.
Sam Bauman:Thanks so much for tuning in to my conversation with Cameron Gillette, co owner of College Muscle Movers. You can find College Muscle Movers online @college muscle movers.com and on Instagram. College Muscle Movers. I'll put that info in the show notes as well. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast so you can be notified of our next episode coming out next week. Thanks and have a good day.
