Laura McHolm, North Star Moving Co.’s co-founder and marketing director, never set out to get into the moving business. After skipping several years of high school and enrolling in University of California at Berkeley at 16, McHolm began a career teaching programming on early Apple computers before getting her doctorate from the Santa Clara University School of Law and practicing as an intellectual property lawyer.
But after meeting her husband, Ram Katalan, who had experience in the moving industry, McHolm decided to go all-in, and she’s been running North Star with Katalan since 1994 and has since grown it to three states: California, Arizona and Texas.
What are the pros and cons of working at a family-run business?
I think it works, because we’re both workaholics and we understand why the other person is working so hard. We don’t feel like they’re taking time away from us when they’re working for the business. Working with your spouse or partner, you pretty much have the same goals. If we both weren’t as driven as we are, I don’t think it would work. The cons are that it’s hard to turn it off sometimes.
How do you approach work-life balance?
We have a Sunday afternoon ritual of playing chess, and so when we do that, we don’t talk about business. And we usually have a movie or something else that we really try to do that’s completely not business-oriented. We have also learned to read cues: I don’t want to talk about business when I first wake up, until I do my meditation. And we both don’t want to talk about it right before we fall asleep, because then you’re thinking about it all the time. So we set up ground rules.
What’s your plan for succession?
Our succession plan is basically dying at our desk and hoping the dog takes over the business. We are franchising now, so I can’t imagine Ram ever stopping working. He loves it.
Did the pandemic force your business to change or pivot strategy?
No. We were considered an essential business. So we needed to stay open, which was a great thing for us. But there were not a lot of people who were willing to work. We had a shortage of movers, because I think they were fearful of the virus and they were also relocating. So we had to turn down a lot of work because of the labor shortage. We need warehouse space, and warehouse space became a huge commodity. A lot of giant warehouses were being turned into growing (operations for cannabis) and the Amazons and big-box delivery companies needed the space. So warehouse space really got too expensive for us.
What would you advise people considering going into business with their family?
I would make sure that you both had the same goals, like what size of the business do you want to end up with? Will you be content working out of your garage, or are you really looking to grow big? Understand each other’s goals, and also, clearly delineate each of the areas that you’re going to be handling so that you don’t have too many cooks in one kitchen and something burning in the other. You’ve really got to make sure that your skill sets are different. When you’re first starting out, you have to wear many, many hats, and you’ve got to decide who’s going to wear which.