A young Oak Park entrepreneur who grew up in the Austin community, is working to build generational wealth for his family, one moving van and satisfied client at a time.
“I want to leave something for my kids and help my family,” said Walter Sims, 27. “So, in December of 2022, I changed my whole life and gave my full life to entrepreneurship and tried new things to build something positive.”
The pivotal moment that led to Sims’ mindset change, sadly, was the loss of his younger brother to gun violence at age 16 in 2016.
“After he passed away, I was losing other friends, close friends and I told myself, ‘I need to grow as a man and do something different,’” Sims said. “That’s when I started my business, Sims’ Family Transportation. I have been doing that ever since.”
The business has its ups and downs, Sims said, and has not reached its full potential as yet but he’s not about to give up.
In an article published last year by the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, titled “The State of Black Owned Businesses,” Adrienne McFarland, program director of the Illinois Small Business Development Center (SBDC), shared her thoughts on the current, and future outlook for Black-owned businesses across Chicagoland. A study a few years ago, she said, found that Black-owned businesses make up approximately 11% of all businesses in Illinois.
“Historically, Black entrepreneurs just don’t come from a world where there’s a support system that helps [them] sustain [their] business, tells you what you’re going to need before you even get started,” McFarland said in the interview.
McFarland continued, “Let’s say you’re 20 years old, and you’ve never met someone with a successful business. How do you know what to do? … Who do you talk to if you can’t ask an uncle, a mom, or a dad for investment into your business? That’s why the main issue for starting a business is access to capital period, point blank.”
Sims has the full support of his mother who lives in Oak Park and father who resides in Tennessee.
“I’m so proud of him,” his mother Sharita Galloway said of her son. “I do whatever I can to help him and invest in him. I’ll introduce him to someone and he does the rest.”
“There are a lot of things that people never told me about the growing pains and the ups and downs of entrepreneurship,” Sims said. “A lot of people are not built for it but I tell myself everyday that this is for me and that there is no Plan B, this is going to work. People tell you to start a business but they don’t tell you about the part where you’re going to be down and some days you won’t make any money.”
McFarland’s advice, to young entrepreneurs like Sims, is to look for a business resource person, someone at a chamber of commerce or SBDC and become as knowledgeable as possible.
Sims right now, does not have a social media page so it’s primarily word of mouth and old-fashioned pounding the pavement to pass out flyers to get the word out about his business.
“I understand now that it’s more about digital marketing as well,” Sims said.
Sims is open to taking business courses to expand his knowledge.
Aside from his solid work ethic, Sims’ use of southern, polite terms of address such as yes ma’am and no ma’am, may be a helpful tool in growing his client base.
“I got that from my dad and my mom,” Sims said. “My dad is from the South. I was always corrected as a child to say yes ma’am and no ma’am to my elders.”
In five years, Sims sees his business with a fleet of vehicles for moving, hauling and other work and about 25 employees.
Right now, Sims has one person working with him.
Another challenging part of his moving business, Sims said, is when clients send pictures of what’s included in their move, however, there’s a lot more stuff when he arrives.
“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Sims said, thanking God for his business. “I’m cordial about everything and professional. I just let them know that next time, they’ll have to pay more.”
Sims at one point rented a trailer from U-Haul and hooked it to the back of his pickup truck. Now that his pickup truck is having problems, he rents a U-Haul truck depending on the size of the move.
“I want to let everybody know that even though I’m a moving business, I also have a logistics business as well,” Sims said. “I also do pressure washing for driveways, garbage cans, back porches. I offer lawn care services as well. I can do a wide variety of things. I’m really just trying to form multiple streams of income so that I can provide for my family and leave something behind for them.”