Erica Fine: Single Mom to 7-Zone College HUNKS Owner

Franchisee stories · Hunks Talking Junk, Ep. 16

Erica Fine owns the College Hunks Hauling Junk® franchise serving Arlington Heights and greater Chicagoland, and she got there from a corporate finance career, not the trades. She spent the first ten years of her career at General Electric, a company with 200,000 employees. She opened as a single mom with kids aged nine and eleven. College HUNKS was named a 2026 Top Franchise for Women by Franchise Business Review, and her episode is the closest thing the podcast has to a firsthand account of what that ownership actually looks like. She is about to hit year four, and co-founder Nick Friedman opens Episode 16 of Hunks Talking Junk by calling her operation one of the biggest in the system.

The episode runs about 42 minutes and covers the parts of a franchise story that usually get skipped: picking a business whose core function she had no experience in, hiring for the gaps she knew she had, and buying out two neighboring owners who wanted to retire early. If you are evaluating this franchise from a corporate job, her path may be the closest thing to yours on the whole podcast. It pairs well with the Thomas brothers’ episode, which is the same climb from the opposite starting line, and with Erick Ramirez in Albuquerque, who doubled his footprint inside a year.

Who is Erica Fine?

Erica Fine is the owner and self-appointed Chief Enthusiasm Officer of the College HUNKS Hauling Junk & Moving franchise serving Arlington Heights and the greater Chicago area. She came out of corporate America rather than the trades. She was the first person in her family to go to college, went to Purdue for undergrad, landed in a General Electric leadership program, and spent years working directly for CFOs before moving into banking and business-to-business sales.

She grew up watching a family business that made countertops and cabinets support three generations, though she never worked in it. The title on her business card came from wanting the introduction to sound like the brand.

“I thought president is so dry and it doesn’t really reflect the enthusiasm and the funness of the brand. So I turned it into chief enthusiasm officer and I put it on my business card so that every time I introduce myself, it just reflects the brand better.”
Erica Fine

By her own description she was risk-averse, which is exactly why she went looking at franchises instead of starting something from nothing. She had no original idea and she knew it. What she had was a decade of proof that she could bet on herself, and a conviction that she had to genuinely believe in whatever she picked. That is the same calculation a lot of people run when they weigh which franchise is worth owning against building something from scratch.

How did Erica Fine grow from one zone to seven in under four years?

She built her first zone until it worked, expanded into a second, and then bought out two neighboring franchise owners who were ready to step back sooner than expected. In 2024 a nearby two-zone owner about five years into their term offered to sell to her, and because she lives inside those zones she calls it a no-brainer. Shortly after, the owner of the downtown Chicago three-zone franchise was nearing the end of his ten-year term when his father got sick and he decided to retire to Florida. That put her at seven zones and two offices, running a mix of one very healthy original market and five she is still turning around.

Her growth engine is networking, and she is specific about the shape of it: chase groups that put her in front of many people at once. She volunteered onto the Arlington Heights Chamber of Commerce and co-chairs its women’s group, joined the Rotary Club, joined the National Association of Professional Organizers, works senior-focused groups, and worked her way one building at a time onto the preferred vendor list at 50 independent senior living communities. She also notes that in four years of networking events she has run into two junk companies and one mover, so being the only one in the room does a lot of work for her.

The service standard is what makes the referrals repeat. She says she is running a 95% net promoter score over her last three months and 4.9 stars on Google, and that with a staff of 35 in her low season heading toward 50 or 60 for summer, the stakes of that number have changed for her.

“Even in my low season, I’m at a staff of 35. And that weighs on me… it’s not just 35 paychecks. It’s 35’s hopes and dreams. And now I’m getting excited to help them with their hopes and dreams, too. I’ll grow for me and now it’s less about the bag. It’s about the legacy.”
Erica Fine

Can you run a franchise as a single parent?

Erica did it with two kids at home, and she is blunt that the early years cost her time she could not get back on demand. She extended before-care and after-care for her kids, skipped the PTA and the school-dance pre-party, and told herself she was grinding harder so she could get those years back faster. She says she is getting them back now, in year four, with a team that can run the day without her standing in it.

Two things made that possible, and both are worth noting if you are weighing this from a household that cannot absorb an open-ended time commitment. She hired against her own gap early instead of learning operations the hard way. And the model is built to be led rather than performed, which is what lets an owner shape the week instead of react to it. That is the practical version of what the franchise model is for.

Do you need moving experience to own a College HUNKS franchise?

No. Prior moving or junk removal experience is not required to own a College HUNKS franchise. Candidates need a minimum net worth of $200,000 and $75,000 in liquid capital, and every owner gets a documented operating playbook, a dedicated franchise business coach, and a dedicated marketing coach. This is an owner-operator model, so the expectation is that you lead the business rather than fund it from a distance. The full numbers are on the investment breakdown.

Erica is a clean test of that. Operations was the one skill set she knew she was missing, so she brought in an operations person through a friend of a friend before she opened, and leaned on the system for the rest. One of those early operations managers started a month after she opened and was nominated for Hunk of the Year last year.

“I might not be a mover and neither was my friend of a friend, but darn that playbook looks good. And so that was it. We embraced the training. We embraced the playbook and I have the confidence that it’s there and it works.”
Erica Fine

What she did bring transferred almost completely: finance, consultative B2B selling, presentation skills, and comfort with data. She runs the business on KPIs so that accountability conversations start from numbers everyone already agreed to, which she is candid about needing, because holding a hard line is the part of leadership she finds hardest. Worth reading what makes College HUNKS different with that in mind: the playbook exists so an owner can spend their time on the things they are actually good at.

Where to listen to Episode 16

The full episode is on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. New Hunks Talking Junk episodes drop every other Thursday, and the rest of the series lives with our other franchisee stories.

Want to start where Erica started?

Erica’s closing advice to anyone sitting where she sat four years ago is two words long.

“Don’t wait. If you really feel like entrepreneurship is for you, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but the most fulfilling other than being a mom, of course… I wouldn’t change a thing because I am where I am now and I have balance in life.”
Erica Fine

Walk the model, the open markets, and the numbers for your zip code with the franchise team. Start a conversation, see which territories are available, or check the markets open right now.

This story reflects the experience of an individual franchise owner and is not a guarantee of your results. Financial information referenced is drawn from Item 19 of the 2026 CHHJ Franchising, L.L.C. Franchise Disclosure Document. See Item 19 for material assumptions and full required disclosures. New franchisees may earn less.

This information is not an offer to sell or solicitation to buy a franchise. A franchise offering can only be made through the delivery of a Franchise Disclosure Document. Certain states regulate the offer and sale of franchises; if you are a resident of one of these states, we will not offer you a franchise unless we have complied with applicable pre-sale registration and disclosure requirements in your state.