Chris Hanson (Great Home Movers)

Chris Hanson is the owner of Great Home Movers, a moving company that services the Twin Cities and can move homeowners and businesses within the entire state of Minnesota. 

Born in Anoka, a suburb of the Twin Cities, the charismatic and comedic Hanson still resides in his hometown.  

“This town has a way of keeping people in it,” Hanson says of Anoka, which is considered the Halloween capital of the world.

As a teenager, Hanson popped ollies on his skateboard and cracked jokes at school, albeit only in the classes where he felt cozy and snug. 

“It all depended on my comfort level with the class itself,” Hanson confirms. 

When he got out of high school, Hanson immediately entered the workforce. 

“I was like, I’m never doing that again,” he says of traditional education, but after bouncing between gigs in sheet metal and furniture moving, Hanson later went back to school and eventually earned a degree from Metro State University. 

“That ties into how this whole moving company thing started.”

More precisely, Hanson was floating aimlessly through life after college, mired in a static role as a supervisor at a huge manufacturing plant where employees were required to stay onsite and eat lunch, instead of having the freedom to drive to Subway or Burger King.

Over time, Hanson wanted more, not only in terms of lunchtime options, but he also wanted to pivot professionally and leave a greater impact on the marketplace. 

“Both of my parents were entrepreneurs,” Hanson says. 

“They were wedding photographers, and as a kid, in between skateboarding and a bunch of other nonsense, I always thought I’d start my own business and be the man, instead of having to work for the man!”

Well, in 2017, Hanson made good on those childhood aspirations when he founded Great Home Movers.

At the company’s inception, Hanson didn’t have a comprehensive business plan or a seasoned mentor guiding him through the rigors of entrepreneurship, but he did have panache, a relentless determination to succeed, and a desire to help others. 

“I didn’t plan anything out,” Hanson recalls, noting how initially he was doing contract work to generate revenue. 

“I just started doing it and figured everything else out along the way. It was hard, but I really enjoyed being a business owner.”

Right away, Hanson and Great Home Movers were very busy, the demand for their services extremely high, but early on Hanson didn’t have any systems in place to effectively manage his workload.

In fact, those first few years, while profitable, were also mentally and emotionally taxing, to the point Hanson contemplated moving off his business.

“But I made a conscious decision that I was never going to quit,” Hanson says. 

“There were times that I thought I was going to have to quit, but I ignored the lingering doubts and just kept going.”

Over time, Hanson began to experiment with subtle changes to his business operations, recognizing that for him and Great Home Movers to grow, he had to personally evolve and become more than just the guy who did practically everything for his business. 

“Back then, I owned my job,” Hanson admits. 

“I didn’t fully understand the concept of owning a business.”

One of his first moves involved joining various networking groups across the Twin Cities, most notably BNI Absolute Connections in Brooklyn Park. 

It was at this specific BNI chapter that Hanson began to learn tactics and strategies from a litany of established business owners already in the organization, and from there, Hanson truly began to make inroads with Great Home Movers.

“With BNI, I was surrounding myself with other business owners who were leveling up and had already been through a lot of the adversity that I was encountering,” Hanson mentions.  

“Being able to learn from their experiences and no longer have to learn everything on my own was crucial to my development as an entrepreneur.”

Today, the affable and jovial Hanson has seen tremendous progress with Great Home Movers, but he insists that the work is far from over. 

“I’m not there yet, but now I have the tools and resources in place to overcome any future challenges, and that’s given me a renewed spirit, especially here in 2024,” he explains. 

“It feels like anything is possible.”

For as much as Hanson has evolved as a business leader, perhaps none of it would matter if he didn’t stick to his core principles of prioritizing customer service and delivering upon previously established expectations, two fundamental pillars that unfortunately not all moving companies abide by. 

In that sense, those who are looking to work with a moving company should vet prospective businesses for certain red flags, one of which is if a moving company is unwilling to come out to your home or business to do an assessment and gauge the viability of said move prior to inking an agreement. 

“If a moving company is not willing to come out to your home beforehand, I recommend stopping the conversation right there,” Hanson says. 

This is because not only should moving companies visit a home to determine what exactly the scope of work looks like, but they should simultaneously be talking with a homeowner to find out exactly what type of service they’re looking to have performed. 

“Whenever I go look at a house, there are always one or two surprises where, had I not gone out there prior to scheduling the job, those surprises would have created complications,” Hanson says. 

“And that’s why you want someone who is going to take the time and effort to be diligent and thorough with their initial consultation, because if they are not willing to do that, then you really should be wondering about what else they are not willing to do.”

It’s this attention to detail that makes Great Home Movers one of the most respected and sought after moving companies in the Twin Cities, but more importantly, their meticulous approach helps ensure that homeowners ultimately have a positive experience.

For context, Great Home Movers has a 4.5 rating (5 is the max) on Google, and that’s because for most moves they have three or four people performing the work, which is typically finished in one or two days.

Hanson adds that prices range from $1-$1.50 per square foot, depending on the size of the home and scope of work.

On a three-bedroom home, this equates to roughly $1,500-$2,500 in cost, and again there are several factors that go into determining a final price. 

“The more ready for a move that you are as a homeowner, the smoother things will go, and ultimately the lower the price will be,” Hanson mentions. 

“But if you’re still taking things off of shelves and frantically packing boxes as we are arriving, then the day becomes longer, and consequently more expensive.”

Looking ahead, in the coming years Hanson is aiming to expand his team and potentially open another location in the Twin Cities, all with the goal being to give more customers a memorable experience when they move.  

“We move people from home to home, but really we are in the customer service business,” Hanson says. 

“I like to have fun and keep things lighthearted, but when it comes my business, I take what I do very seriously. My team and I pride ourselves on delivering an exceptional customer service experience. That’s how we have been able to get to this point, and it’s the only way we will continue to grow in the future because at the end of the day, life is about people and relationships.” QS

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As a family-owned business with 53 years of experience in the Twin Cities market, Grussing Roofing specializes in residential roofing, insurance restoration, siding, windows, and gutters.

For homeowners and commercial building owners who are looking to connect with a company that prides themselves on putting customers first, look no further than Eden Prairie-based Grussing Roofing.