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Local Living
A community podcast for Palm Beach to Parkland.
Local Living
Q Shark Moving: Meet owner Vlad Kandybovich
Discover the compelling journey of Vlad Kandybovich, founder of Q Shark Moving, as he transitions from aspiring basketball star in Belarus to a thriving entrepreneur in the United States. With just $10,000 and a vision, Vlad and his father broke into the moving industry, defying language barriers and turning challenges into stepping stones. Tune in to hear Vlad's inspiring story of resilience and determination, as he shares how he took a leap of faith to build a successful business, which has now completed over 58,627 moves and expanded from California to Florida.
Feeling stressed at the thought of your next move? Vlad offers an insightful look into how Q Shark Moving can transform a daunting task into a smooth journey. Whether you’re knee-deep in packing materials or just starting to plan, Q Shark’s comprehensive resources and personalized services are designed to make your moving experience less painful than a dental surgery. Learn about their commitment to customer service, from decluttering tips to money-saving advice, and how they go the extra mile by assisting those who aren't even their clients. Trust Q Shark Moving for a seamless transition to your new home in South Florida.
Q Shark Moving
844-462-8202
www.qshark-moving.com
Local Living is a community podcast for Palm Beach to Parkland. Are You A Local Business, Resident, Leader or Non-Profit? If so, we would love to have you on the podcast!
Go to www.locallivingpodcast.com for all of the info.
Welcome, welcome everyone to Local Living. We are a community podcast for Palm Beach to Parkland. I'm your host, david Conway, and today we've got a really interesting guest, vlad Kondybovich. He is the founder, the owner, of QShark Moving Vlad. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, dave, thanks so much for having me. My pleasure. You know I briefly met you. I knew you were an interesting guy just from our brief chats, so I was really really excited to have you on today. Why don't you start out and tell our listeners a little bit more about QShark Moving?
Speaker 2:Yes, so we opened our company all the way back in 2014. So we've been in business for over 10 years now and a couple of months ago we finally opened a location here in Florida, in Boca. So we're very excited to be part of the community and start serving you guys and kind of bring this California experience to Florida residents. So I'm really excited to be here and hopefully, you know, achieve the same success we had in California.
Speaker 1:So you started the business in California. How long have you been operating in California?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we started in 2014. And since then it's been almost 10 years. So, yeah, it's been a while.
Speaker 1:And when I took a peek, I noticed you had a lot of great reviews Over those 10 years. How many moves would you say that you've done?
Speaker 2:And when I took a peek, I noticed you had a lot of great reviews Over those 10 years. How many moves would you say that you've done with QShark Moving? Yeah, so for this podcast specifically, I looked it up exactly, so we did 58,627 moves One second you said 58,000.
Speaker 1:What was it?
Speaker 2:58,000, and what 627.
Speaker 1:That's an incredible amount of moves. So it's safe to say you're not new at this, Vlad.
Speaker 2:Definitely not new, and since the beginning our focus was customer experience first, and I think that's kind of allowed us to do so many moves, just because people like working with us and recommend us to each other, and that's kind of the main reason we were able to grow so much in California.
Speaker 1:There's nothing better than word of mouth. So tell us a little bit more about your background. Where are you from originally? Tell us a little bit more about your journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was born in Belarus and pretty much moved to the United States to play basketball, and that was my childhood dream and the main reason why we moved. But after a year or so here my basketball career did work out and I decided to do business with my dad and that's how QShark came about Just a little father and son moving company starting together in a new country, and we grew from there. So that's kind of my background.
Speaker 1:So I know there must have been a lot of challenges when you first went to California. You came over, for you know, hoping to build a career or a journey, explore further with the professional basketball. Um, that didn't quite work out now. How was it? How was your? Were you speaking english when you got here? How was the language when you first arrived?
Speaker 2:yeah, when I first got here, uh, neither me or my parents spoke any english at all. And I kind of like to tell this story about our first visit to local McDonald's. And you know, we don't have this option as combo. We have McDonald's, so I was familiar, but we don't have combos. You just pick separate items and you order them, pretty simple. And when the lady asked me, would you like a combo? And I was like oh god, what is combo? And I was like okay, I pretty much have two answers yes or no. And I was like yes, she's like okay. And the next question kind of killed me because she asked you want to do large or medium, or like large or small? And I was like, oh god, what God, what is combo? What is large, what is medium? I don't understand.
Speaker 2:And I was like yes. So I only had two answers, right? Yes or no. Okay. So I answered yes and she's like no large or small. And I was like, well, if yes was a wrong answer, it means no is the next best I can do. So I was like no and she's like God. So that process even ordering at McDonald's was kind of painful in the beginning. So that was my English level at the moment.
Speaker 1:Now, obviously a ton of inherent challenges for anyone starting a new business. Now, why moving? Did you get a job in the moving industry? Was your father already into it? How did that come about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so pretty much moving business is very friendly to new immigrants because it's a very physical job, but you don't really have to speak a lot, excuse me.
Speaker 1:I guess it's more about whether or not you can just do the work right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you just need to do the work and you don't really have to speak the language. So that's why a lot of immigrants, when they first arrive, look into the moving services. And that's what my dad did, and I had a chance to go to school here while he was working as a mover and then after a year I joined him in a truck, kind of doing move together.
Speaker 1:And then you just decided to open your own business and did you have a bunch of money saved. Would you help with the journey, Because that's a difficult leap going from mover to actually starting your own moving company right? How did that go? Is $10,000 in our pocket.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of all what we had. Total $10,000, total $10,000, that's it, yeah. And first $3,000 went to buy an old Nissan car. That was a manual car that I can't drive, just don't tell anyone. And then working as a mover yeah, you don't really make much. And creating our own company was a leap of faith, and you know, one of the other stories I like to tell is purchase our first truck and I remember how like it was yesterday we flew all the way to Las Vegas to buy this truck and we had to use 7 different credit cards to make that purchase and the truck was like 9,000, 9,000, 10,000, so it wasn't a lot of money. But because, you know, we just came and we had this small card for like 250, 500 dollars in between two of us, so we had to use every limit we had and I think we had a little bit of cash saved up. So that was how we bought our first truck, with a bunch of credit cards.
Speaker 1:And then you just start promoting the business, building it slowly and obviously you were very successful in California. Why the move to Florida? By the way, great to have you here.
Speaker 2:I'm very happy to be here. So far Florida has been treating me very well, especially Boca Raton area, and my dad has actually moved here as well. So the whole crew, the original crew, is here. The OGs, the OGs, the OGs are here, yeah, so we chose Florida because during the pandemic we started doing a lot of long distance relocations from California to Florida and that kind of made us look into just the lifestyle and, you know, economics and everything in Florida and it turns out, you know, know, it's a lot easier and better to be a business here in florida, um, and the weather is nice, kind of same as california. So we decided why not open location here, um, and yeah, that's why we're here now so do you do local moves, long distance moves.
Speaker 1:What do you do? Do you offer a wide array of services or is it only local?
Speaker 2:So we do long distance and local and commercial, so pretty much anything you need we do. We don't transport cars as right now, but our main focus is local moves, but we can pretty much help out with any type.
Speaker 1:And I noticed that your reviews are, I think, all five-star reviews, which is extremely challenging, especially in your business, I would imagine, because there's so many variables or so many things that could go wrong even for a perfect move, or at least perfect in execution. What would you attribute those five star reviews to? What do you think really sets QShark moving from just you know, some other of the moving companies out there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's that's a great, great question because, as we all know, moving it's a process. It's not, like you, just OK, tomorrow I'm going to move all my items to the new place. It started with looking for the new place, applying for a mortgage or for a lease, and then you have to be approved and then change your mail, and the moving process is very long, very annoying, and what we try to do is help the customers from the first time they call. So from the first call we want to provide a good experience, right, answer all their questions. We have a very simple pricing policy. We don't charge any hidden fees or anything like that. So we're trying to make it very straightforward so people are not confused in the end what they're paying for. So we give them exact pricing, exact services, no surprises, very simple.
Speaker 2:Then you know after their first call if they're booking an appointment with us. We make sure to follow up, make sure to answer any questions if they have any. Then during the move we train our movers, and training is a big part of our success because every mover we have is completed our training before going out to move customers. Okay, and that's what helps us to provide a good experience during the moving day and also after the move is done. It's not like our relationship is over right After the move is done. We do follow up with customers to see how they're doing, if they need any additional services, anything we can recommend in the new area. So it's more about building a connection with customers and I think that's what helped us get a lot of reviews and a lot of good reviews.
Speaker 1:So when you get that first call and you mentioned, you let them know what the price is going to be, or an estimate. Is it an estimate or is that the price?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's where moving becomes tricky. Right, we do have flat rates for smaller moves where we know exactly the amount of items you move and it's kind of easy to predict how long it's going to take. But other than that, we usually charge by the hour. But what we're trying to do it's not like they're going to hold you hostage and come to your house and say we're going to move everything and you pay us for every hour, no matter how long it takes. We work with customer's budget. So let's say, customer only wants to pay for three or four hours, so make sure we get the biggest items they can move themselves, because you can always move smaller items yourself if you want to save money. That's totally fine.
Speaker 2:So we're not in there to get the most out of you as a customer. We're here to help. So you're hiring movers to get help? Yeah, you mentioned.
Speaker 1:I mean, moving is really for me right up there with getting my wisdom teeth pulled a lot. Or worse, or worse, I tell you I can remember being a young guy and nothing worse for me than getting the call from your buddy that wants you to help him move. I mean, that's a call I always dread. You want to play friends.
Speaker 2:So you're like oh yeah, I guess I'll come.
Speaker 1:So for someone I mean for someone that's, you know, about to move they're starting to finally face the reality of everything that they need to handle. Do they need to be ready to book the business when they call you Can they call you with questions or do they need to wait till they're definitely ready?
Speaker 2:It is a process and you know some people call and they're ready. They know what they use moving companies before. You know they know they probably called some other companies, they know how the process works and they're ready to book right away. Or you know they have their mindset.
Speaker 2:But we also get a lot of customers that are just looking to move. They don't even have a new place. They might be just thinking about, let's say, relocating from California to Florida and they want to know how it looks like, how long it takes, how much money they'll have to spend, what are the insurances, what are kind of like preparations they need to do. And we have a lot of great resources on our website and also we provide them via email to the customers, such as how you can prepare, what you can expect on the moving day, what are tips and tricks, how to pretty much, let's say, declutter your house before moving, how to save money on the moving, um. So we get all type of requests and be trying to, you know, understand what stage the customer is and kind of provide them information for that particular stage. Uh, so they feel supported all the way, right, right.
Speaker 1:It seems like you're really. You're helping through the whole process, even if they're not ready to move tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what we do and, like I said, moving can be a long process and what we also do. Let's say, someone contacted us and then decided to go visit a different company. We still reach out to ask how their movement, if they have any questions, even if they chose a different company, it doesn't mean we can't help them with, let's say, an advice or just an idea of what they can do. Like I said, relationship with the community is very important for us and I think in California we had a good success just because we were able to build those relationships with the local communities, and that's what we're trying to do here as well.
Speaker 1:Well, vlad, I can tell you just from me doing my own homework and I do more than most. Than most, I'm confident that South Florida is better for having QShark moving here with us now, and I think it's great for all of us that you relocated or expanded your business to Florida. So if one of our listeners wants to reach out and has questions or is considering moving, what are the best ways to get a hold of you? What's the website?
Speaker 2:So let's start with our website. It's qshark-movingcom. Pretty simple. If you want to reach out by phone, we have a simple toll-free number and you'll speak with our representatives. We don't have any call centers or anything like that. You speak with our own employees, okay, and our phone number is 866-925-5012. You can also send us a text message to this number. You can also send us a DM on Instagram. You can probably send us a mail. It's gonna take a while, depends what you need, but you can send us a mail All the information you can find on the website for our addresses, for locations. So, like I said, we're trying to make it simple for customers. Whatever works for you, reach out. You know we pride ourselves to have, at max, 5 to 10 minutes response time to any requests. Okay, great. So it's not like you put a request and you wait for days. You'll get an answer within 10 minutes Hopefully faster.
Speaker 1:Well, Vlad, it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, david. It was first of all great to meet you. I'm super excited to be on this podcast, super excited to hopefully help the community. So I really appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1:Well, like I said, you have a great story. I know obviously from your reviews, from everything I've seen, you do amazing work and everyone be sure to contact QShark Moving if you have questions or if you're ready to move. And once again, I am your host of Local Living, david Conway, and we look forward to having you back and listening to the podcast real soon.