Kansas City’s highest rated moving company has packed up its operations. The group of friends who started the business — Let’s Get Moving — made the strategic move to pivot their venture to full-time digital content creation.
“We started a moving business to help make money to allow us to do what we wanted to do next. It served its purpose, so we are moving onto the next thing — and we’re doing it together,” said Stephen Lomas, head creative of LGM Boys.
When Lomas and his friends Kyle Allen, Chase Higgins and Desi Kraus founded Let’s Get Moving in 2015, they made the job of professional moving more entertaining by creating short, funny video clips with one another during their furniture-moving workday and posting them online, Lomas recalled. The social pages for LGM Boys (formerly Let’s Get Moving) boast more than 306,000 followers on TikTok, 110,000 on Instagram and 24,000 on Facebook.
“Closing the moving company happened slowly,” Higgins explained. “It evolved to us being less involved, and it is difficult to expand a business and expect the same level of quality. Moving is just a lot of work to make a little bit of money, and we are able to be more profitable with content creation.”
“We had a couple of truck damages that cost us a couple $100,000, which were really tough,” Allen added. “Also it was hard to recover from COVID. We’ve been movers for 15 years, ran a company for eight; and it was just time to move on.”
Click here to read about how Let’s Get Moving got its start.
The LGM Boys feature founders Allen, Higgins, Kraus and Lomas — as well as two former Let’s Get Moving employees, Blakeston Bryant and Diego Barra.
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Linking to a spicy solution
LGM Boys Diego Barra and Desi Kraus join in a photo shoot for Brooklyn, New York-based photographer Max Del Prior; photo courtesy of LGM Boys
Along with TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, the LGM Boys have expanded into other platforms such as Cameo, Patreon, YouTube and have a podcast titled “LGM Boys.”
“I don’t think people would expect the amount of work that goes into creating a video,” Kraus noted. “We’re really pushing our Patreon because that’s where we’re showing more of the behind-the-scenes of what it takes to create a video.”
“Unlike other jobs, there’s no manual or how-to with social media,” Lomas said. “Day to day, you see what works, and you figure it out. There’s definitely a learning curve.”
Individually, some of the LGM Boys have monetized their content by opening creator accounts on OnlyFans —a social media platform where followers can pay for private or “spicy” content. Lomas, Allen, Higgins and Kraus discussed the strategy on one of their podcast’s first episodes.
“OnlyFans definitely has a sexual connotation to it,” said Higgins on the LGM Boys podcast. “It’s a site where content creators can post sexually explicit stuff that’s not banned, whereas most sites have community guidelines specifically restricting or prohibiting nudity or sexual content.”
Diego Barra and Stephen Lomas, head creative of LGM Boys, shoot content for the group's social media channels; photo courtesy of LGM Boys
Chase Higgins and Stephen Lomas, head creative of LGM Boys, shoot content for the group's social media channels; photo courtesy of LGM Boys
Chase Higgins, Stephen Lomas, head creative of LGM Boys, and Desi Kraus shoot content for the group's social media channels; photo courtesy of LGM Boys
The platform is the largest site where creators can post whatever they want — as long as it’s not illegal —he continued, noting the true benefit is getting a payoff that the LGM Boys don’t see directly from posting on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
“We spend all of our day creating content to post on those sites,” said Higgins, emphasizing the click-through impact when followers find the links from mainstream platforms to their OnlyFans content. “Being willing to expose our bodies, and exploit our looks … if people come across our TikTok as a group or our individual pages and are like ‘Oh, these guys are f—–g hot’ and they want to see more, [the link to OnlyFans] allows us to actually make a living by posting risqué stuff that we otherwise can’t post on other platforms.”
Otherwise, it’s very difficult to make much money on TikTok or other platforms without a huge audience and major brand deals or sponsorships, he noted.
Watch more of the LGM Boys’ OnlyFans conversation below, then keep reading.
LGM Boys: front row, Stephen Lomas and Chase Higgins, back row, Kyle Allen, Desi Kraus, and Blakeston Bryant; not pictured: Diego Barra; photo by Channa Steinmetz, Startland News
Each of the LGM Boys supports the group page through their own personal social media accounts and also has felt the support from loyal followers, they shared.
“We have a group of people who have been consistently involved in our content, and they’ve created a group and talk almost every single day,” Allen said. “They’re from all over the world, and it’s really cool to see them brought together from our content.”
“When we post, they are the first one in the comments,” Bryant said. “If we go live, they’ll be in there saying funny things or just being supportive.”
The entrepreneurial bug still exists within the group, Lomas said, noting that they are likely to continue building businesses and communities with one another as their careers go on.
“We’ve talked about opening gyms, hopefully within this next year,” Allen said. “We all care about fitness, and opening a gym is a project we talked about since we started the moving company. Now, we have the opportunity to do that.”
LGM Boys: Chase Higgins, Stephen Lomas, Desi Kraus, Kyle Allen, and Blakeston Bryant; not pictured: Diego Barra; photo by Channa Steinmetz, Startland News
KC Boys
When rebranding to LGM Boys, the group had a discussion about being called the KC Boys as a way to highlight the city and make it become more known as a place of opportunity for other creators, Bryant said.
“It’s cool that we could be in a different part of the country, and we get people who recognize us from online,” Bryant noted. “For us to be the ‘KC Boys’ and then have people immediately associate us with Kansas City, I think it would help put KC on the map.”
Although the guys recognized that markets like Los Angeles and New York have a stronger foundation for content creators, they have no plans to leave Kansas City. Rather, they want to continue to build their foundation at home.
“I’ve traveled all over the world, just like these guys have, and seen things and met with a lot of people,” Higgins said. “I absolutely love this city and feel an incredible amount of pride being from Kansas City. I’m born and raised here. My daughter is here. I just love the vibe here and want to do what I can to bring good things to the city.”
Supporters of LGM Boys (possibly KC Boys in the future) can anticipate one last “sexy mover calendar” with pre-orders opening soon.
“We actually started doing our calendars to get us through the slow season of the moving company,” Kraus said. “Our calendars were doing better than moving, so our final calendar is our next thing.”
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An old saying advises founders from going into business with their friends, but the LGM Boys shared that they wouldn’t change a thing.
“It’s been pretty damn fun running a moving company with my friends,” Higgins said. “To be honest, the moving company would have been successful as long as we wanted it to be. It was continuing to grow, and we were having fun doing it — even though moving furniture is literally the worst job. Doing something that I didn’t enjoy, with people who I really enjoy, has been more valuable than if I had a company by myself that was more successful.”
Check out the LGM Boys’ personal pages here: Stephen Lomas, Chase Higgins, Kyle Allen, Desi Kraus, Blakeston Bryant and Diego Barra.
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Tags: LGM BoysBlakeston BryantDiego BarraDesi KrausStephen LomasKyle AllenLet's Get MovingChase Higgins
