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The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
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those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
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comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you
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for choosing W FOURCY Radio.
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Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
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condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helenan believes that certainly applies
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to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W
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four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com and
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now your host, Kevin Helena.
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Thanks everybody for joining in again today. I am Kevin Halenan,
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and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on
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W four cy dot streaming live on talkfour tv dot com,
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and we're on Facebook and that's at Winning Business Radio.
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We're live there, and we're live on YouTube, and of
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course we're on every platform imaginable After the show in podcasts,
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that's YouTube iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, etc. Et cetera. The mission
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of Winning Business radio and TV, as regular listeners and
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viewers know, is to offer insights and advice to help
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people avoid the mistakes of others, to learn best practices,
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the how tos, the what tos, the what not tos,
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to be challenged and hopefully to be inspired by the
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successes of others. Those consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and
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owners and entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know, as
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I say every week, virtually every successful person I've ever
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talked to has had some form of failure in their
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lives and careers. So while we all have to get
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our knees skinned once in a while, I'm driven to
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keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to
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learn from history so we don't repeat it. I've spent
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the better part of my career equipping businesses to grow
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from solopreneurs to small and medium sized companies all the
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way up to the Fortune fifty. I've seen some of
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those companies win into varying degrees. I've seen some fail.
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I've had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of
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the highest performing people around to hand with some who
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probably should have found other professions. And my own businesses.
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I've had lots of success, but some failures too, and
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I'd like to think I've learned a lot from those experiences.
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So yeah, you'll hear a little bit from me, but
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mostly you're going to hear from our guests. Those experts, consultants, coaches, advisors, authors,
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founders and owners and entrepreneurs. And today my guest is
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Mark Silverman, President and CEO of Marx Moving in Storage.
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Here's his bio. In nineteen seventy nine, Mark Silverman was
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a student at Northeastern University in Boston, and while many
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college students were spending money on their social lives, he
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needed to spend money on school, but he first had
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to earn it. Students needed moving help every semester, so
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he decided to become a mover. The problem was he'd
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never been a mover, so we just purchased a small van,
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believe it or not, with a credit card, hoping to
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make a few extra dollars to pay tuition. Eventually, the
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business became Mark's sole focus. One man in a van
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becames Mark became Marx Moving in Storage. Over the years,
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he recognized the need for a steadfast philosophy, so he
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built the business around guaranteeing one hundred percent customer satisfaction.
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Nearly forty six years later, Mark is still looking for
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opportunities to help people. He created Mark's Northeastern Furniture Foundation
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and collects over twelve trailer loads of lightly used and
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new goods each year and works with Greater Boston nonprofits
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to share those treasures with local families in need. Mark
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also founded the storage company dot com, a premier resource
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for warehousing and transportation of medical equipment, machinery, fixtures, and
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high value products. Additionally, he invested in and manages Massachusetts
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Portable Storage, a company that offers convenient and flexible portable
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storage options options excuse me for short term and long
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term needs. The company has grown from a small local
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business to a regional leader, serving residential, commercial, inns, industrial
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customers across Massachusetts and beyond. Mark and his companies have
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earned the following awards quite the list National Multiple Sclerosis
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MS Shining Star Award, Green Initiative Award from the Newton
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Needham Chamber of Commerce, Westboro Economic Development Committee, Best Sustainable
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Business Award, Northeastern University's Center for Family Business Winner twenty
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fourteen for top honors, the Gold Quality Award from arpin
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Van Lines and the ARP and Charitable Fund Charity Contest.
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And Mark's a past president of the Needham Business Association
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for the two thousand and six and seven years and
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as a past president of the Massachusetts Movers Association the
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two years of one two three. He holds a Bachelor's
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a Business in a BS in Business Administration from Northeastern.
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He resides in Needham with his wife Lisa. They have
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four children and get ready eleven grandchildren, ages one through thirteen. Mark,
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Welcome to Winning Business Radio.
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Thank you for having me on the show.
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My pleasure. What's the best part of being a granddad?
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Ah, that when you're done playing with the kids, you
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can give.
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Them back same. I've only got two, but wow, eleven
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a lot of incredible. Yeah, very blessed for sure. Tell
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us a little bit about your wife, Lisa.
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My wife, Lisa I met forty two years ago. Forty
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two years ago in Florida. Actually neither one of us
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lived in Florida. We happened to be there at the
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same time. Funny we met and not too long after
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that we get married. Lisa owned a woman's clothing boutique
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for a couple of decades right here in need M.
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A couple of years ago, after COVID struck, it was
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time to give up the store and go have some fun.
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So that's what she's doing.
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Good for her. So tell us, I want to. I
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always like a little bit about a guest's background. So
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where did you grow up? Mark? I grew up in Brookline, Okay,
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right suburb of Boston, pretty close to Boston. What was
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it like to grow up there?
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Well, uh, we lived, Uh, you know, it was an
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interesting area. It was a working class area, Brookline, and
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you know, everybody around us they were very hard workers.
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So you you would you go to school.
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In the morning and you you would get home and
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normally you wouldn't see your you know, your parents. Still
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in my case, my father till you know, very late
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afternoon or early evening. But there was a great work ethic,
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both in my home as well as my neighborhood. So
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learned very early that if you want to, if you
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want to make it in life, get up early and
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get something accomplished.
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What'd your dad do?
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My my dad worked as a civilian for the Air Force.
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He was an electrical engineer at Hanscom, perhaps at Hanscomb.
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Yeah, okay, yeah, all right, what was what was your
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excuse me, what was behind your decision to go to Northeastern.
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Well, you know, now, if you want to get into Northeastern,
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you really want to be a smart guy, much smorrow
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than I am. Back then, it was a long time ago,
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and back then it was more of a commuter school.
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And quite frankly, I was never a great student. I've
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always worked. I was shining shoes when I was nine
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or ten years old, streets up and down Cornwolf Avenue.
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You're yelling shoe shine, shoe shine, strolling newspapers, you know,
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a little older than that, and you know, always work.
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Was really never that interested in school.
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Almost dropped out of high school.
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Actually, and there was a fellow by the name of
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Mead Reynolds, still in touch with him today, a teacher
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at Brookline High and said, you know, Mark, you know,
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don't drop out. Go check out this other place, this
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other school. And he knew what he was doing. He
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sent me to this school where it looked like pretty
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much everybody that was at that school their next stop
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was going.
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To be a prison oh man.
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Yeah, you know, and a bunch of tough guys.
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Yes, why do you just stay in school, take a
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course or two, don't drop out. And he was a
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smart man, because that's exactly what I did, and then
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I got into it full scale. However, that doesn't get
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you into a lot of good colleges. Again, more interested
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in working. So Northeastern was a commuter school at the top,
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and you pretty much could get into the Austic. But
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it leads into a really good story. So back then,
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get into Northeast and no problem. He's there for a
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year or two or three and had you this moving
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business going. I said, you know, starting a family, and
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I need more money, and you know, I'm going to
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drop out of Northeast and drop out of college against
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everyone's wishes, but I'm going to try and build a business.
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So again I'll.
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Often say I'm not the brightest guy or author. Took
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me thirty nine years to graduate college. But when all
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my kids were done with school, I went right back
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to Northeastern because I knew it wasn't going anywhere, and
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I enrolled again Northeast, and in twenty fifteen I received
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my bachelor's degree in business from the Moora McKim School
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of Business there. And the beauty of that was when
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I went back the second time, I actually cared about
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what the professor had to say. I actually cared about
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the lessons to be taught. As a young kid. You're
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more interested in working or whatever, not necessarily what the
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professor has to say. So that second vote at Northeastern
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taught me a lot. And in fact, it was there
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that I met Professor Ted Clark. Professor Clark is the
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gentleman who sort of took me under his wing and
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helped me start Mark's Northeastern Furniture Foundation.
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So when I was.
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Getting ready to graduate, you had to write your final paper,
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and I talked all about this furniture foundation I'd like
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to start, and I was donating furniture, and Professor Clark said, well,
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you know what, you can make something big out of this.
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It doesn't have to be just collecting a couple of
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pieces of friend You can start a you know, a nonprofit.
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You can really make something big out of this. And
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today I'm fortunate that Ted is still on my board
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of directors of the nonprofit and we collect a whole
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bunch of furniture for those in need. But Northeastern all
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thirty nine years treated me very well.
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Yeah, I understand. It's like twelve to trailer loads a year.
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So at first we would we would get a piece
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of tool furniture that someone was disposing they had no
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need for it.
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We would take it to the dump.
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And again early on I had a tenant in one
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of our warehouses, United Way of tri County, and they
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don't throw that stuff away. You can get this recycle
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someone needs us. That was sort of the beginning, along
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with the help of Ted formalizing everything and so now
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with Mark moving and storage. If we're moving somebody and
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they have furniture they don't need, and in many cases
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they're downsizing or in the case of a.
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You know, a a divorce, some people consider the same.
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Thing that this furniture now gets collected while we're moving people.
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We put it onto a fifty three foot trailer at
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our warehouse, and when the trailer is full, we bring
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it to Household Goods and Acting who distributed it piece
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by piece to those in need. However, we found that
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there were people that wanted to contribute furniture, but we
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weren't moving them. Maybe they just were getting a new
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bedroom set match, whatever it may be.
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And it's very expensive. Labor is very expensive, so to.
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Go get a piece of furniture from somebody when you
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don't have a truck already there, it's cost prohibitive. So
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we sit at another company. It's called Remarkable Donations dot org.
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So this is for people we're not moving. They can
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go to Remarkable Donations dot Org. They go on the
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site and for a very nominal fee, way less than
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anybody charges for moving, they can pay to have us
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pick up the pieces so that the quantity of goods
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were able to keep out of the landfills and get
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into the hands of those in need. And then we
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top it off just a good measure by raising a
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minimum of twenty five thousand dollars each year, and we
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go out and we buy a trail load of brand
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new mattresses. Yeah, I number that item that they need
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and we donate those as well. So we're very fortunate.
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I've been very fortunate. But I understand what altruism is
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all about. I understand what giving back is all about.
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And my team people that work with me, we all
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do a very good job at accomplishing that.
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Well, that seems evident. Why don't we do this? Let
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me ask you a couple more questions. Let me go
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back to Northeastern to the early days. How did you
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find students that needed moving? I mean, were they just
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falling in your lap or did you have to hustle
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for them or what did that look like?
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Yeah, so it wasn't just students. Maybe anach update my I.
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Oh, but well that was the genesis, right, It wasn't