Leadership Spotlight: Josh Krishner - Seattle Junk Removal Franchise Operator
Josh Krisher, 30 years old from Seattle, has a long history with The Junkluggers CEO Josh Cohen. They originally met at summer camp before freshman year of high school in 1998 and did a lot of traveling around Europe as they became close friends. Krisher has a business degree and a master’s degree from the University of Washington. When Krisher was going to school, Cohen formed The Junkluggers concept in Connecticut and urged to join him, but he wasn’t ready at the time. Krisher decided to continue with grad school instead and worked at Ernst & Young for three years. He decided to leave the accounting firm, traveled for a while and when he was traveling, he decided to join up with Cohen at The Junkluggers. By this time, they were in need of a full-time finance manager and find someone to take that part of the business to the next level. Josh started with The Junkluggers in December 2010.
How did you learn about the brand? I am a very close friend of the CEO and stayed in touch with him for a long time. It was always something I considered to someday be part of my career. In fact, working together has improved our friendship.
Why did you choose an opportunity with The Junkluggers? I decided to get out of corporate America and help Josh grow the business. In my experience, a lot of accounting is very backwards thinking. It’s exciting to work for something growing to the future and see the work that I do impacting on a daily basis.
Are you involved with any charities or do any community outreach with your business? Yes. I am very active with Junkluggers’ philanthropy endeavors. It’s pretty much a daily business activity. Our luggers are always trying to donate items. We’re very fortunate that we can work for good causes every day. We work with all different sizes of organizations from the Westchester County Furniture Sharehouse, NYC Build it Green, Connecticut Helping Hands to more local nonprofits.
What challenges have you overcome to get where you are now? The hardest challenge was making the decision to get out of corporate America. I knew from day one it wasn’t what I wanted to do. It wasn’t the right environment for me and coming to Junkluggers opened a new path.
Do you have any superstar employees? What is their story? We have a ton of great guys for the field, their personalities really vary. Everybody really cares, it’s a flat organization and we work to a common goal.
What are your expansion or development plans? What is your end goal with The Junkluggers? The initial goal is to focus in the Northeast corridor for growth. It’s important to us that we do this at the right speed and do it in a way we can truly control and support. We’ve leaned on consultants and networking opportunities to really understand the best way to go about this.
Right now, we’re at about 40 people in the system. It varies depending on the season. We peak in June, July and August, but start ramping up in March. We can get up to a staff count into the mid-fifties in the summer. Our territory size is 400,000 people, that’s with two trucks, which means we have about four to eight employees per territory region.
What are some of the publications you read? Local? National? What is your goal publication with your business? The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal
Do you have any other interesting hobbies or passions? I like traveling, sports and music festivals. I’m a big Washington Huskies and Syracuse Orangemen fan and go to a bunch of music festivals every year.