FXBG Neighbors Podcast
Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast
FXBG Neighbors Podcast
EP #28 From Dining Room Tables to Digital Auctions: Navigating the Downsizing Journey
Downsizing a lifetime of memories isn't just about moving furniture—it's an emotional journey filled with tough decisions. Alan Sack, owner of Caring Transitions of Fredericksburg, brings clarity and compassion to this process, sharing how his personal experience helping his distant parents downsize sparked his entrepreneurial journey.
Alan pulls back the curtain on one of the biggest misconceptions families face: the true value of cherished possessions. Those dining room tables and china cabinets that were once forbidden territory for small children? They rarely command the prices families expect in today's market. With refreshing honesty, Alan explains how the cost of labor often exceeds the selling price of these items, setting realistic expectations for listeners who might soon navigate this transition with their own parents.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Alan reveals how Caring Transitions creates a complete circle through their CTBids online auction platform—essentially a "local eBay" that connects unwanted possessions with new owners. While large furniture pieces stay within the community, collectibles and smaller treasures find homes across the country, creating a sustainable approach to downsizing. For those unexpected challenges that inevitably arise during transitions, Alan emphasizes the importance of building a reliable team that can tackle even the heaviest, most difficult items.
Whether you're facing your parents' transition or planning ahead for your own future, this episode delivers practical wisdom mixed with entrepreneurial insights. Alan's parting advice about marketing visibility resonates beyond the senior transition industry: "If they don't know about you, they can't choose you." Take the first step in preparing for life's transitions by exploring Fredericksburg.CTBids.com or CaringTransitionsFredericksburg.com, where weekly auctions connect communities and give cherished possessions new life.
Alan Sack
Caring Transitions of Fredericksburg
caringtransitionsfredericksburg.com
(540) 368-6092
CTFXBG@caringtransitions.com
This is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. Today, I'm excited to introduce you to Alan Sack, owner of Caring Transitions of Fredericksburg. Alan, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you, dori. Good morning, glad to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for being my guest. I'm excited to learn all about your business, so let's start there. Can you please share with our listeners a little bit about your business?
Speaker 3:Certainly, Caring Transitions is in business to help seniors downsize. So when it's time to move from their long-term home and perhaps go to assisted living or other types of accommodations, we can help them pack, move, unpack at their new location so they don't have to do that. And then we can go back to the house and sort and organize everything and find a way, find a new home for all their possessions they no longer need.
Speaker 2:That is very interesting and such a needed service, so I love that so much. I have parents that are going to need that service very soon, so I'm very interested in learning about this. So tell me about your journey and how you got into this.
Speaker 3:Well, I got into this business. Obviously, the way many people do is that they were doing it themselves for their family, and at the present time, I was living here in Virginia and my my parents were in Colorado and since I was the farthest kid away, I had to go do all the work and then find somebody to, you know, haul it all the way. So, um, when I got done with that process and I realized, you know, I have some skill in this area, let me look into this and and I researched Caring Transitions, which is we operate as franchises and I'm the franchise owner of Fredericksburg, and so I researched it and found out that this is what works for me.
Speaker 2:Interesting, interesting. So tell me, do you, when talking to potential customers, do you find that there's any, you know, myths or misconceptions that you have to dispel?
Speaker 3:Well, frequently probably the most thing is people you know say, hey, we've got to sell these things in the house and they're so valuable. How do we get the money out of all these things in the house? And typically anymore the items aren't worth nearly what the family thinks they are. So the misconception is that, oh okay, well, if you sell the things it's going to pay for all the move and all the clean out and everything like that. And realistically it's a lot of work. It takes a lot of man hours to do it. So families can either do it themselves, which they find they usually don't like to do, or they're out of town and they really can't do it, and so we help to do that. But the cost of labor these days is more than what the furniture will bring sometimes.
Speaker 2:Right, right, I could see that. I could see my parents thinking that some of the stuff in their home is probably worth a lot.
Speaker 3:It's their dining room table and the china cabinet are so valuable because they were and they were the things you were not allowed to touch when you were little, and so forth. But nobody really wants them anymore because everybody wants to be mobile and have small tables and so forth. So yeah yeah, so it's a very common issue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for clearing that up for us. So I imagine that that you're very busy with your business. There's a lot of moving parts, and so when you're not working on your business, tell us what are you doing for fun.
Speaker 3:Well, surprisingly, during COVID and everything, I've developed a habit of doing jigsaw puzzles, so kind of to relieve stress, which is kind of what this business is. In a way, it's like okay, you've got all these things, how do we find a new home for all these things? Which is kind of a jigsaw puzzle. And then I have liked to play golf also.
Speaker 2:Nice, nice, nice. I do also love jigsaw puzzles. It's something that you kind of have to completely unplug from and you're completely focused on the puzzle, and it really is great for getting your mind off of other things.
Speaker 3:So I'm with you on that. I think that's what I, that's what I use it for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So tell me, um, if you were to start over and um, you could give yourself some advice, or if you could give some advice to if someone you know came up to you and said, hey, I'm interested in starting my own business, what advice would you give a new entrepreneur?
Speaker 3:I would say that the the most important thing when you're starting a new business is you've you have to know before you start how are you going to market that business?
Speaker 3:Because, everybody has a great idea for how they're going to do it and they may like doing the job or they, you know, maybe you like making jewelry or you like building houses or you whatever that thing is, and that's well and good. And everybody says, okay, I'm going to be so great at it, people are just going to flock to me. But that's not how it works. You really have to go out and continually market the business and find a way to keep your message in front of people so they know about you when they need the service. So many people you know say, oh, I wish I would have known about you two years ago. I get that. I probably heard that about 50 times in the last eight years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if they don't know about you, they can't choose you.
Speaker 3:True, Because I didn't know a business like this existed. It's like well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, visibility is everything You've got to keep your business out there so that people know who you are. So great advice. I love that Awesome. So when you started your business, or maybe along the way, have you found that there's any, have been any? You know hardships or challenges that you feel like you overcame and now you're you're a better business owner for it.
Speaker 3:Well it's. You know, in this business of downsizing, you know there's always the biggest, heaviest, most difficult thing to find a new home for, or get out of a house or things like that. And it comes up every time right. And so eventually I realized like, okay, the team knows how to do this. Okay, if I can't do it myself, at least the team can chip in and we'll get it done. And you know, that's why it's so important to have, you know, good team members. I have a great, great staff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's huge. A staff that you can count on is huge. So what is something that you wish the listeners knew about?
Speaker 3:caring transitions that you wish the listeners knew about Caring Transitions. I wish that they knew more about us. And the other side of the Caring Transitions business which the general public can use, even if they don't have senior or they need to downsize themselves, is have an online auction site called ct bids, which you can see it up in the logo there, and the ct bids is how we find new owners for all the furniture and all those little knickknacks in the house that we can auction it off and people come and pick it up, and it's a very seamless, very seamless process. And you know, in everyone's house there's, there's always the things they think are valuable, like the dining room table and the China cabinet. But when that ends up being valuable, is the sterling silver into the China cabinet or just all these little knickknacks that they bought in the sixties that aren't being made anymore, right? So those become valuable just because of scarcity. So, but that's how people can really help the Caring Transition brand is by participating in the CT bids auctions.
Speaker 2:So that's very cool. I didn't, I wasn't aware of that, so I love that you shared that. So it's almost like a local kind of like a local eBay.
Speaker 3:It's almost like a local, kind of like a local ebay it's very much a local ebay, and I mean people know ebay carrying transition owners are all over the country so if something is shippable you can shop anywhere in the country for it. Now you're probably not going to buy a bookcase from seattle and have it shipped here because that you know it's not going to work. But, we have both a local presence, you know, for people picking up those big items. But anything you know collectible, shippable and so forth you can buy it anywhere.
Speaker 3:That's very cool so it really has a nice complete circle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's very cool. I just love, I just love what you're doing and such a great service and I, I just love it so much. So tell me, how long have you been in the Fredericksburg area?
Speaker 3:We. I started the business in Alexandria in 17 and we were doing a little bit of business down at Fredericksburg because there wasn't a caring transition owner down here.
Speaker 3:So, they might have been using somebody from Richmond, somebody from Charlottesville, somebody from Alexandria type of service, because all the realtors and the senior communities that we get a lot of referrals from are, all you know, clustered here in Fredericksburg and so we this is a very much a referral business from realtors, attorneys, senior living communities and so my wife and I had made the decision to move here and expand the business here, and it's going very well.
Speaker 2:Very cool, very cool. I love that. I love that. Well, the Fredericksburg community is lucky to have you Great, so can you share with our listeners how people can connect with you, find out more about you? Or visit CTBids.
Speaker 3:Certainly out more about you or visit CTBids, certainly. So we have a website which is CaringTransitionsFredericksburg. com. You can also find it at CaringTransitionscom and search the locations and then for the online auctions, the URL is Fredericksburg. CTBids. com and if we have an auction going currently it will show up there. If not, it'll say, hey, we're preparing one, because we typically have about an auction going each week. It's not every week, but we have one ending today and we'll have another one start tomorrow. And then we're working. You started started cleaning out the house of one that's going to be a pretty nice one. We have some really good high ticket items. So fredericksburg. ctbids. com.
Speaker 2:Excellent, Alan. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today and sharing Caring Transitions with us.
Speaker 3:Great. Thank you so much, dori, we appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to Dori. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to fxbgneighborspodcastcom. That's fxbgneighborspodcastcom, or call 540-534-4618.