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EXIT Podcast Episode 21: Junk Removal (feat. Ray Whitcomb)
325 Plays3 years ago
Ray Whitcomb owns Junk Removed Now, a junk hauling service in Colorado Springs, CO. He started from a borrowed truck with an antique trailer, & now owns a shiny F-550 and storage facility, and employs five people. We discuss:
- Finding stable revenue in a business with few repeat customers
- Maintaining healthy margins when anyone with a truck can compete on price
- Getting a minimum-wage MBA and homeschooling rowdy boys
- Identifying profitable jobs and resale markets
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Ray Whitcomb and JunkRemoveNow.com
00:00:17
Speaker
Welcome to the Exit Podcast.
00:00:19
Speaker
This is Dr. Bennett.
00:00:19
Speaker
I'm joined here by Ray Whitcomb.
00:00:21
Speaker
Ray's a mission buddy of mine.
00:00:23
Speaker
He owns JunkRemoveNow.com, which is a junk hauling business out of Colorado Springs.
00:00:28
Speaker
I wanted to have him on the show to talk about how he turned a pickup truck into a successful small business.
00:00:33
Speaker
So welcome to the show, Ray.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hey, thanks.
00:00:36
Speaker
How you doing?
00:00:37
Speaker
I'm good, man.
00:00:38
Speaker
So first of all, tell us a little bit of how you got started and how you came up with the idea.
Ray's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:00:45
Speaker
I got started because my brother was doing it with a pickup truck and going to networking groups.
00:00:51
Speaker
And he got bored and wanted to do something else.
00:00:54
Speaker
But he was doing all under the table, making cash deals, and he just got bored with it.
00:00:58
Speaker
And he was like, I'm not going to do that anymore.
00:00:59
Speaker
And I thought, I could do that.
00:01:01
Speaker
It's easy.
00:01:02
Speaker
Like people point to a pile and you pick it up and haul it away.
00:01:06
Speaker
Not really too complicated.
00:01:09
Speaker
So you just scooped it up free and clear from your brother.
00:01:12
Speaker
So I'm going to ask you a little bit more about this later, but did he have a client list or was it just sort of... No, no.
00:01:18
Speaker
It was just the idea.
00:01:19
Speaker
And he didn't have any business entity, so there was no LLC, no...
00:01:26
Speaker
anything else like that it was simply just that he would go to networking meetings and say that he would do hauling and like people would pay him and he would just ask cash or a check in his own name like it was wow real real simple right but i also knew that there were these franchises in town that like had these really nice trucks and like really really like they their business stayed open
00:01:51
Speaker
And there had to be some big money.
00:01:53
Speaker
If somebody goes into a franchise and starts doing something, there's enough money there to pay franchise fees and an owner
00:02:00
Speaker
And to pay for staff.
00:02:01
Speaker
So I knew that it wasn't like a bad idea.
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:04
Speaker
So I thought I can do that.
00:02:06
Speaker
So I went and got an LLC and insurance and all that other stuff and basically just copied what he was doing.
00:02:11
Speaker
Just go to networking meetings and go from there.
00:02:14
Speaker
So did you ramp up from some other hustle that you were doing or some other income streams or did you go full bore into this with nothing else going on?
00:02:24
Speaker
I mean, I've always hustled.
00:02:25
Speaker
Like, I grew up where the only way you would have things is if you were creative, in the sense that you had to take hand-me-downs and, like, if you found something on the side of the road, you had to make it work type thing.
00:02:37
Speaker
So I've always hustled.
00:02:39
Speaker
I never looked good on paper.
00:02:40
Speaker
I didn't finish high school.
00:02:41
Speaker
I like got my GED, right?
00:02:43
Speaker
So I didn't like look good as far as like, if I was going to a regular job or corporate America, like I didn't look good for that.
00:02:48
Speaker
So the only really option I had is I've always hustled.
00:02:51
Speaker
So there is no other, there was never that option then.
00:02:55
Speaker
So did you, did you go, but did you go straight from this to, or straight from like zero to 60
Building a Client Base
00:03:00
Speaker
on this?
00:03:00
Speaker
Or did you go like have it part-time for a while?
00:03:03
Speaker
No, no, no, no.
00:03:03
Speaker
That's like, I've never, I've never, I've never idled on top of a fence ever.
00:03:10
Speaker
Either I'm all in or all out.
00:03:12
Speaker
That's just kind of how I've always been, much to the detriment of my relationship with my wife and me just deciding to do things.
00:03:20
Speaker
But I think at the time I was doing like multi-level marketing crap and stuff.
00:03:25
Speaker
Like I was working at a job at like a retail store selling like shoes for like women and like telling them that the handbags match their shoes.
00:03:35
Speaker
I wasn't doing anything like anything big.
00:03:39
Speaker
And I had like owned my own business when I was like 13, 14 with my friends doing lawn care.
00:03:45
Speaker
So I knew that like you didn't always have to trade time for money that you could like
00:03:50
Speaker
hey, I'll mow your lawn and if you're fast at it with like my two other friends, like we can get it done in 15 minutes or 20 minutes, whatever, then like we made more money that way than trading like time for money.
00:04:00
Speaker
And so my brother was doing this.
00:04:03
Speaker
I asked like, well, what are you charging people?
00:04:04
Speaker
And he was charging people a couple hundred dollars for a truckload.
00:04:08
Speaker
And like if you're fast and you could do it in 30 minutes, a couple hundred bucks in 30 minutes, like that sounds great.
Challenges with Subcontracting and Financial Struggles
00:04:17
Speaker
so i jumped it in the long the the short of that the tldr is like i jumped right in yeah did it take a long time to get to where you were covering all the bills and and um stable with this one or was it pretty like you pretty much had an income stream right away that was
00:04:37
Speaker
sustainable I mean I started it and then I when I get super slow and I didn't have enough work since I had I've done glorified grunt work my whole life so I would call other contractors and I would call them and see if they had work and I would work for them when I didn't have jobs so like so it was more like those were the part-time jobs and my full-time gig was trying to figure out how to do the junk business I got pretty good at like
00:05:03
Speaker
keeping a consistent business.
00:05:04
Speaker
I started working with a lot of real estate and property managers, property managers, more than real estate agents, but to be a property manager, you have to have a real estate license.
00:05:14
Speaker
And, uh, they represent each, like each one of those individuals or those entities represent between like 50 to 500 properties.
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:22
Speaker
And, and if you find big enough ones, then they kind of have a constant turnover of maybe bad tenants that they need junk called out from.
00:05:31
Speaker
So the way, Oh,
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:05:34
Speaker
So the way I'd stay busy is them.
00:05:37
Speaker
Got it.
00:05:38
Speaker
So it's more than just individual people who have a mess.
00:05:42
Speaker
You've got like institutional customers that sort of have a steady stream of junk issues to handle.
00:05:51
Speaker
Right, yeah.
00:05:52
Speaker
And then it's just a math problem, right?
00:05:55
Speaker
Let's say that an average property manager does a job every two months.
00:05:59
Speaker
Well, then if you have eight to ten property managers that you work with, then you'll get a job from them a week.
00:06:05
Speaker
And each one of those jobs could represent $500 to $1,000 depending on the job.
00:06:11
Speaker
So then you have somewhat of a steady income.
00:06:13
Speaker
But by volume, the majority of your work is going to be one...
00:06:18
Speaker
one time only never repeat.
00:06:20
Speaker
Right.
00:06:21
Speaker
So yeah.
00:06:23
Speaker
So your goal is trying to figure out how to get the one timers and then also how to build like a steady, you know, backend of like to keep your expenses.
00:06:33
Speaker
But I, I, uh, I got it going and I was doing okay.
00:06:38
Speaker
Not necessarily thriving, but I was still alive and like we were keeping the business alive.
00:06:41
Speaker
And I met a guy at the dump who, uh,
00:06:46
Speaker
who was a subcontractor of a subcontractor.
00:06:49
Speaker
Basically, he worked for the banks and he hauled away stuff out of foreclosed homes.
Seeking Stability in Employment
00:06:55
Speaker
And he said, hey, would you like to work for me?
00:06:58
Speaker
And I was like, well, maybe what's, you know, what does it take?
00:07:01
Speaker
And he's like, well, we have so much work I can't keep up with.
00:07:03
Speaker
And at the time I was so hungry for that.
00:07:06
Speaker
I thought, oh, that would be a great idea.
00:07:08
Speaker
Let's do that.
00:07:10
Speaker
But I was really naive as to what that meant.
00:07:14
Speaker
Okay.
00:07:16
Speaker
Okay, so it's like, it's like my first year in I meet this guy, he's like, promising me the moon and I fall head over heels for it like this would be phenomenal.
00:07:26
Speaker
So my wife was hesitant, but I was like, Oh, it'll be fine.
00:07:30
Speaker
It'll be great.
00:07:31
Speaker
I should have listened to her.
00:07:32
Speaker
But the way it worked was net 90 day pay.
00:07:37
Speaker
So I didn't get paid from the first job till three months after I had done it.
00:07:41
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:44
Speaker
So I had never had a credit card in my life till then.
00:07:47
Speaker
And I got a credit card to float the expenses.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, you can see where this is going.
00:07:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:55
Speaker
So, so, um, six months go by and to keep up with the demand of stuff that was coming in, then like I had hired two kids, paid them 10 bucks an hour each to do this.
00:08:07
Speaker
This was, uh, this was like eight years ago now.
00:08:10
Speaker
So, um, like 2012, 13 range.
00:08:12
Speaker
And yeah.
00:08:13
Speaker
So I, um,
00:08:23
Speaker
Because I was a subcontractor of a subcontractor at this point, then what I was getting paid for like the junk removal side was like 25 to 30% less than market.
00:08:34
Speaker
No way.
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:35
Speaker
So I was, but it was, but it's a, it's a different game.
00:08:38
Speaker
It's a volume game, right?
00:08:39
Speaker
The largest animal.
00:08:40
Speaker
in the world eats the smallest thing, right?
00:08:42
Speaker
Like the large corporations make the smallest like little profit like millions over, right?
00:08:47
Speaker
Sure.
00:08:48
Speaker
So I'm thinking, okay, it's a volume game.
00:08:50
Speaker
But they didn't just have us do junk.
00:08:52
Speaker
They also had us do like cleaning of the property, mowing the lawn, and you had to take pictures of all of it.
00:08:57
Speaker
And like because I was not his only subcontractor, he would give me the crap that was like three hours away.
00:09:04
Speaker
So then I –
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, so then I have to drive with my crew three hours away, try to do the job in one day.
00:09:09
Speaker
And if it didn't do it in one day, we had to go back like the next day, right?
00:09:11
Speaker
So like totally negative things.
00:09:14
Speaker
So after six months, I'm like, I've depleted my wife's life savings.
00:09:19
Speaker
I've depleted my savings.
00:09:21
Speaker
Like we are...
00:09:23
Speaker
dire straits right yeah and i figure out i iron out all my expenses i tell the guy i want everything i build and i work
Rebranding and Business Growth
00:09:32
Speaker
it all out and i was making three dollars an hour for those six months oh my gosh yeah yeah you you want to talk about an education um boy right
00:09:47
Speaker
Right.
00:09:47
Speaker
So I, I came to a quick reality of what I had done.
00:09:55
Speaker
And so I decided that I had to, I had to find a job.
00:10:00
Speaker
I had to find something.
00:10:02
Speaker
So within 15 minutes of sending the email that I quit, like I'm done, like I called a friend of mine who had a manufacturing business and I said, Hey man, I need a job.
00:10:12
Speaker
And he said, well, I don't have a job.
00:10:15
Speaker
But I know how you work and I know who you are and I know that like you would be an asset to my business.
00:10:22
Speaker
So show up on Wednesday.
00:10:24
Speaker
This was Saturday.
00:10:25
Speaker
Show up on Wednesday.
00:10:26
Speaker
I'll have a job created for you.
00:10:28
Speaker
I went in on Wednesday.
00:10:29
Speaker
We've looked at all of my bills and what I had to make every month.
00:10:33
Speaker
So then he paid me more than like the normal starting person so that I could cover all of my bills.
00:10:39
Speaker
I think I had $50 extra a month.
00:10:42
Speaker
for that time.
00:10:44
Speaker
And I don't know if you know anything about plastics manufacturing, but it is mindless work.
00:10:49
Speaker
Like there are these big machines that put plastic pellets in through a screw and it comes into molds, right?
00:10:56
Speaker
And if it's set right, that machine can run all night.
00:11:00
Speaker
and it'll have like 10 to 20 parts pop out of the machine every cycle.
00:11:04
Speaker
And those cycles can be like three seconds to a minute and a half, depending on the size of the part.
00:11:09
Speaker
So in the morning when I'd come in, that machine had run all night.
00:11:12
Speaker
And if the machine doesn't close properly,
00:11:16
Speaker
on the edges of where the two sides come together, it'll have what's called flashing.
00:11:20
Speaker
And so I would sit, I would like, and they would make like what's called a gaylord, which is a, like what the material gets delivered in.
00:11:28
Speaker
And it's pallet size, like four foot by four foot, four feet tall.
00:11:31
Speaker
And so there'd be like six gaylords of plastic parts.
00:11:35
Speaker
And you would, I'd have, I'd have,
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah, you'd sit there with an X-Acto knife on this big table, and you would just, for all day, you would just sit at this table and shave off the extra plastic and put it in a separate bin.
00:11:48
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:11:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:49
Speaker
Brutal.
00:11:50
Speaker
Brutal.
00:11:51
Speaker
Right.
00:11:51
Speaker
So I worked there for a year.
00:11:53
Speaker
Right.
00:11:53
Speaker
So like so this happens for six months and I'm like I worked there for a year.
00:11:57
Speaker
But what like what I learned in high school was that if my hands were busy, then I could absorb material.
00:12:04
Speaker
Right.
00:12:04
Speaker
Like and so what I did in high school is I
Starting and Competing in the Junk Business
00:12:06
Speaker
drew graffiti all day and that's how I absorbed what was being taught in class.
00:12:10
Speaker
Because when I went and took my GED test, the lady was like, it took me like 15 minutes to take the test.
00:12:17
Speaker
She's like, why are you here?
00:12:18
Speaker
And I was like, what do you mean?
00:12:19
Speaker
I hate coming to school.
00:12:20
Speaker
Homework, I think, is optional.
00:12:22
Speaker
And so is attendance.
00:12:24
Speaker
So what do you mean?
00:12:26
Speaker
I know exactly why I'm here.
00:12:27
Speaker
And she was like, no, no, no.
00:12:28
Speaker
You passed this test with flying colors in 15 minutes.
00:12:32
Speaker
Why are you here?
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:34
Speaker
Right.
00:12:35
Speaker
And I was like, well, because the school doesn't teach the way I learn.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:40
Speaker
Right.
00:12:41
Speaker
And so and teachers hated it because they'd like ask me a question with my head down and I and and then I would like put my head up and or not even looking up.
00:12:49
Speaker
I would just answer the question and continue drawing.
00:12:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:53
Speaker
So it wasn't that I didn't understand the material.
00:12:54
Speaker
It was just that like.
00:12:56
Speaker
the way I learned wasn't fitted for the way school works.
00:12:59
Speaker
But that became a real benefit with plastics because like what I did for that year is I listened to business books and business podcasts for that whole year.
00:13:10
Speaker
And I would just like, I basically got paid for like a school at like a business education.
00:13:16
Speaker
So I just listened to stuff and then I would like pause it and
00:13:20
Speaker
At the table, I'd be out there, be like five other people.
00:13:22
Speaker
And then I would like unplug my headphones and then I would just start talking about ideas and like, what about this?
00:13:27
Speaker
And some of the people would be interested, other people wouldn't.
00:13:31
Speaker
But that like, at the end of that year, I sat down with a business consultant and I rebranded as Junk Removed Now.
00:13:39
Speaker
And one of the big things that he told me to do was these little bandit signs.
00:13:45
Speaker
Right, because I, like, junk removal is seasonal, especially in Colorado or anywhere that has, like, a real winter.
00:13:51
Speaker
So once the snow falls, then people, like, no one's going to mess with the stuff they have in their backyard, like,
00:13:58
Speaker
Like the only people that you'll have are your like commercial clients, like the property managers and real estate agents.
00:14:04
Speaker
So you'll have, you'll like make just enough to scrape by.
00:14:07
Speaker
And then winter is like your like spring and summer is like gangbusters where you make all your profit.
00:14:13
Speaker
And if you're smart, you stack it and then you float through the winter.
00:14:16
Speaker
That's just, yeah.
00:14:18
Speaker
the cycle that it goes through.
00:14:19
Speaker
So I quit working plastics in November.
00:14:26
Speaker
Like it had been a year.
00:14:27
Speaker
And I sat down with a business consultant and he was like, do these little bandit signs.
00:14:32
Speaker
And I'm like, there's no, like, so I ordered the signs.
00:14:34
Speaker
It takes them like six weeks to get to me.
00:14:37
Speaker
And I'm like, I'd spent a lot of money, right?
00:14:39
Speaker
Because at this point when I was working for plastics, I was making $500 a week.
00:14:43
Speaker
I was making two grand a month, which is like,
00:14:46
Speaker
Barely nothing.
00:14:47
Speaker
We didn't live in the fanciest apartment, right?
00:14:49
Speaker
Like, like I've, like I've always had, yeah, we just made, made do with it.
00:14:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:55
Speaker
So then I get these signs and I'm like, I don't think they're going to work.
00:15:02
Speaker
But this guy... To be clear, the bandit signs is like, so if someone's like, we'll buy your house, or we buy junky cars, like those kind of signs that just are in like the grass, the berm on the side of the road.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:15
Speaker
Got used diabetic strips, those things.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yeah, like the same.
00:15:18
Speaker
Right.
00:15:18
Speaker
Right.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:20
Speaker
Which, you know, you see them everywhere.
00:15:21
Speaker
So obviously they, they, they are working for somebody, but, but yeah, it wouldn't occur to me that those would be like the, the most effective way, but continue.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:33
Speaker
Which was the same, like same.
00:15:34
Speaker
I was like, there's no way that those signs work, but this guy who, this consultant,
00:15:40
Speaker
He's a serial entrepreneur.
00:15:41
Speaker
He owned like five businesses at the time and they all ran all making money.
00:15:46
Speaker
Right.
00:15:46
Speaker
Like he knows something that I don't know.
00:15:49
Speaker
So like in the end, that was like the conversation my wife had with me.
00:15:53
Speaker
She was like, Ray, like he wouldn't lead you astray.
00:15:56
Speaker
He's like, he didn't like, he didn't,
00:15:59
Speaker
He was like a friend of mine, right?
00:16:01
Speaker
And he didn't even like charge me for the consultation, but he was like, to the point, brass tacks, these are the things you need to think about.
00:16:07
Speaker
This is how you, like, this is how, what I would do in your situation.
00:16:10
Speaker
And it was just like a 20 minute meeting.
00:16:12
Speaker
And he brought up these signs.
00:16:13
Speaker
He's like, you should do them.
00:16:14
Speaker
Right.
00:16:15
Speaker
As far as like low cost, I think it cost me like $350, right.
00:16:21
Speaker
Which at the time was like eight months of savings.
00:16:23
Speaker
Right.
00:16:24
Speaker
So it was like a big deal for me.
00:16:26
Speaker
So we ordered these signs and I put out a couple.
00:16:29
Speaker
I don't get anything.
00:16:30
Speaker
And she was like, and my wife was like, you know, you really just put out a ton.
00:16:35
Speaker
So I put out 20 signs.
00:16:37
Speaker
And then in the next 10 days, I did three grand in business.
00:16:42
Speaker
Wow.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:43
Speaker
So I went like, I made like a month's salary in like a week and a half.
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:49
Speaker
Would you, if, if you had it to do over again and supposing you didn't have like a trusted contact for that kind of business consult.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:59
Speaker
Would you tell someone to seek out that kind of consultation or was that sort of something that was just because you knew the guy?
00:17:07
Speaker
Well, no, it was, it's a combination, right?
00:17:10
Speaker
So like, so when I first started, I thought I knew, I thought I had all my crap together.
00:17:16
Speaker
Right.
00:17:17
Speaker
And then me taking on that contract showed me I did not know what I needed to know.
00:17:22
Speaker
And then listening to those business books and business podcasts opened me to like a completely different view of the world.
00:17:29
Speaker
So whether or not I would have had him as a contact or not, like I would have found somebody that could have helped me.
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:38
Speaker
And I would say, you know, so I just did my MBA and it was a remote job.
00:17:46
Speaker
for the last half of it because of COVID.
Managing and Scaling the Business
00:17:49
Speaker
And I would say, based on the types of books and podcasts that I'm involved in now and reading,
00:17:59
Speaker
It's basically the same.
00:18:01
Speaker
Like, you basically got the MBA experience.
00:18:05
Speaker
Like, other than the country club element of it, like the sort of Rolodex of contacts, like, that's what people are really paying for when they go to business school is, like, to know people that are going places.
00:18:15
Speaker
But as far as the education itself, what they, like, tell you they're teaching you, it's a joke.
00:18:20
Speaker
You can get it from podcasts, 100%.
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:18:26
Speaker
So, so how do you, this is a little bit of an aside, but given, given the challenge that you had with public school, what's your approach like with your kids as far as education?
00:18:42
Speaker
Ooh, good.
00:18:43
Speaker
This is a, this is a good rabbit hole.
00:18:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:18:46
Speaker
Um, well,
00:18:49
Speaker
I have four kids and they're all very different.
00:18:52
Speaker
My first child is like center stage, super like ADHD, has a really hard time sitting in a chair.
00:19:01
Speaker
Like really hard time.
00:19:03
Speaker
But if you give him a video and like he can sit or walk around and watch it, he can almost like quote you the whole movie.
00:19:12
Speaker
So he loves documentaries because I love watching documentaries and then he would watch them with me.
00:19:17
Speaker
And so then he learns about stuff.
00:19:18
Speaker
And anytime he had a guest come into one of his classes, then he knew everything that the person was telling them and he would expound on it.
00:19:32
Speaker
And every time one of those visitors came, they would say, you could take my job.
00:19:38
Speaker
right he's he's he's 10 now right so he he absorbs material really well but does he do well on their tests and stuff no right no he doesn't and so he like so he's had a really really hard time and when he should have been um we also his birthday is in august which is like that weird cutoff in american schools right and we should have held him back one more year when we didn't and uh
00:20:07
Speaker
So he should have been held back and wasn't, right?
00:20:10
Speaker
So he's had a lot of issues.
00:20:12
Speaker
And then my second child is, we call, like, he's really good at finding loopholes.
00:20:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:21
Speaker
Okay, so one of the best examples that I can share of his ability at loopholes is with, when it was COVID and they were in school and they'd sent those kids home with tablets or computers or whatever, and they would have Zoom meetings,
00:20:34
Speaker
he on his own ability learned that he could take a picture of himself and set it as the background and would walk away from the tablet.
00:20:45
Speaker
Right.
00:20:46
Speaker
Right.
00:20:47
Speaker
Like, so what, so as, as that is an indication of his ability to problem solve, what he would do in class when he was in class was he would repeatedly tell the teacher that he didn't know what he was doing to the point that the teacher gave up on him.
00:21:06
Speaker
So that he could do whatever he wanted.
00:21:08
Speaker
Not that he actually didn't know.
00:21:10
Speaker
Like he's always been able to like very quickly assess the situation, understand how it works, and then he will manipulate it for his benefit, right?
00:21:21
Speaker
Like he was two years old.
00:21:22
Speaker
I was driving a class B CDL truck, right?
00:21:26
Speaker
So it's like, it's a big medium duty truck and I'm driving and it's a standard car.
00:21:32
Speaker
And he's two years old and all he's doing is watching my hands and my feet.
00:21:36
Speaker
And I'm like, what are you?
00:21:37
Speaker
And I asked him, what are you doing?
00:21:38
Speaker
And he said, I'm learning how to drive.
00:21:41
Speaker
And I was like, what?
00:21:44
Speaker
And he is, he's that sharp.
00:21:46
Speaker
So with COVID and everything happening with that and all the Zoom meetings and then the stuff going on with my oldest son, we realized that my kids are going to get left behind.
00:21:57
Speaker
And if they continue in public school, they will be like me in the sense that like I was a kid in class that if you couldn't tell me when I'm going to use whatever principle or skill thing that you're showing me in real life, I would not care anymore.
00:22:17
Speaker
If you couldn't tell me that like you as an adult, whatever your age, are not using these principles and they don't have a like real life impact, then I do not care.
00:22:27
Speaker
Right.
00:22:28
Speaker
Right.
00:22:28
Speaker
Which made me very much like a like a punk kid, like a little bit of a chip on my shoulder because I knew that no one soon saw me for my ability to like solve problems.
00:22:39
Speaker
I've always been really good at that.
00:22:41
Speaker
But I got left in the dust by school.
00:22:43
Speaker
And so for a long time, I was like, F school.
00:22:46
Speaker
I don't care.
00:22:47
Speaker
Right.
00:22:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:48
Speaker
So where we're at now is we're at we're doing homeschooling, which has been its own adventure.
00:22:54
Speaker
But we're finally like found a curriculum and like combination of things to be able to actually leverage our kids like what they're good at and help them advance in the world.
00:23:05
Speaker
Good for y'all.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:06
Speaker
What curriculum do you use?
00:23:08
Speaker
I don't know.
00:23:10
Speaker
Wife's hand on that one.
00:23:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:13
Speaker
Well, she'll talk to me about stuff and then she'll say like, I don't know how to teach them this.
00:23:16
Speaker
And I, my boys are a lot like me, so I know how to teach them that.
00:23:20
Speaker
But then it's like I'm working and she's with the kids.
00:23:23
Speaker
And my wife very much, she grew up where if you explain to her why that there was like a box of rules and you stayed inside the box and that kept you safe, what she really heard was like, oh, I'm safe if I stay here?
00:23:36
Speaker
Great.
00:23:37
Speaker
I don't need to try anything.
00:23:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:42
Speaker
And my boys are not like that.
00:23:45
Speaker
There's a rule.
00:23:46
Speaker
I'm going to try to break it.
00:23:48
Speaker
And so...
00:23:50
Speaker
So it's been a learning curve for both of us.
00:23:54
Speaker
I know that school wouldn't be good, but...
00:23:56
Speaker
Like she's has she she had to let them go to school and then see how the schools treated them to then see that it would be better for them otherwise, because we know how smart our boys are.
00:24:06
Speaker
But we also know that the school, the way it's designed, like the teacher's hands are cuffed.
00:24:10
Speaker
They can't even if they understood how to teach our kids, they can't really teach our kids the way our kids need to be taught.
00:24:15
Speaker
Oh, sure.
00:24:16
Speaker
Sure.
00:24:16
Speaker
I mean, it's just what are the odds that like even if even if there weren't like sort of special like ways of doing it,
00:24:26
Speaker
what are the odds that a state employee with 25 kids is going to do as good a job with as much attentiveness as like their mother and it's four of them.
00:24:36
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:24:37
Speaker
Right.
00:24:37
Speaker
Right.
00:24:38
Speaker
I had a conversation recently with a, a friend of mine who is developing a homeschool curriculum himself.
00:24:46
Speaker
And he was saying, he's done a lot of research and he was saying like people who essentially do unschooling where they just don't,
00:24:54
Speaker
they don't do school basically.
00:24:58
Speaker
Their kids at the end of like the K-12 timeframe, they test about a year behind.
00:25:06
Speaker
So if you do nothing, if you do zero at all, your kids on average are going to end up one year behind.
00:25:15
Speaker
And so like, yeah,
00:25:18
Speaker
So the odds that by deliberately actively homeschooling them, you're going to do worse than the public school system, it's zero.
00:25:26
Speaker
There's no way.
00:25:28
Speaker
And that's borne out by all kinds of research.
00:25:33
Speaker
So that's awesome that you guys are jumping into that world.
00:25:38
Speaker
Our oldest is seven, so we're pretty new to that scene.
00:25:43
Speaker
But yeah.
00:25:45
Speaker
But it's a lot of fun.
00:25:46
Speaker
And so that's why I raised that with you, because I'm always interested in how people approach that, especially when they weren't well served by the educational system themselves.
00:25:55
Speaker
But getting back to the business, one of the things that struck me about this is that it's incredibly easy to start up, like a pickup truck, and I guess maybe like a trailer if it's a big job.
00:26:10
Speaker
Right.
00:26:12
Speaker
And that's cool, but it also suggests that you're vulnerable to being kind of poached by new entrants.
00:26:22
Speaker
So is there a way to protect your profit margins?
00:26:24
Speaker
How do you differentiate yourself from any other guy with a pickup truck who might want to do this?
00:26:30
Speaker
The biggest way you can differentiate yourself is price.
00:26:35
Speaker
Okay, so when I did the foreclosed homes and all of that, I had my truck that I was driving on the transmission went out.
00:26:46
Speaker
And to get a new transmission at the time cost like three grand.
00:26:50
Speaker
I didn't have three grand, right?
00:26:53
Speaker
The only reason that I was able to continue working was that someone that I had met who had become like an adopted grandparent to my family,
00:27:03
Speaker
my wife and my kids had a spare truck and he let me use his truck until, and then eventually we agreed that like I would just buy it from him.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:17
Speaker
So the, like what happens with people is yes, like the buy-in to do junk removal is very low.
Marketing and Customer Experience
00:27:22
Speaker
And really like if you wanted, you could even take like a little four door car with a hitch and put a little trailer on there and you could haul stuff.
00:27:32
Speaker
But in the end, like anything that constantly moves breaks, right?
00:27:38
Speaker
So most of the people are driving like a piece of used equipment.
00:27:44
Speaker
And if they continue to run it,
00:27:46
Speaker
then it will eventually break.
00:27:47
Speaker
Now, the other thing that most people think, and the thing that I had to face when I sat down with that business consultant was about price.
00:27:55
Speaker
He told me you should charge as much or more than the franchises.
00:27:59
Speaker
And I said, there's no way, no way someone's gonna pay that, right?
00:28:03
Speaker
And he's like, no, no, you don't understand.
00:28:05
Speaker
If you raise your prices, you isolate yourself from a lot of the people that would be your headaches.
00:28:14
Speaker
The people that expect everything but don't want to pay anything.
00:28:21
Speaker
You automatically out yourself from that.
00:28:22
Speaker
And then if you try to fight on price and do a race to the bottom, and I've watched it.
00:28:28
Speaker
I mean I've been in this for eight years, right?
00:28:30
Speaker
I've watched it in and – like people come in and out of the business because what happens is they think that they can be the cheapest out there.
00:28:37
Speaker
And they, what happens is everyone hears that they're the cheapest and sure, I lose business, right?
00:28:42
Speaker
But the way my price structure is, is like their price structure, it'll take two to three jobs for them to make the same amount of money I make in one job.
00:28:51
Speaker
Right.
00:28:53
Speaker
Right.
00:28:53
Speaker
Now the, the, that is important because that means they have to run two to three times harder than I do, which means everything that they're working on, everything they're working with is going to break faster, right?
00:29:06
Speaker
And then they don't have the funds to be able to fix it.
00:29:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:10
Speaker
So, yeah, it is a low buy-in, but if you don't actually understand your expenses and what it costs you to show up, then you will eventually run dry.
00:29:23
Speaker
Hmm.
00:29:26
Speaker
And I had an uncle who sat me down and he was like, I won't let you, like after I did my debacle with like the foreclosed homes, then he wouldn't let me start my business back up until I understood what it actually cost me to show up to give a free quote.
00:29:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:44
Speaker
Which means like I, I had to know like what my insurance costs were, what my like employee costs were, how much time it actually took me to get from where I was to the job fuel and like my own personal time and break that all down.
00:29:58
Speaker
So know that like, it actually cost me $75 to show up on someone's doorstep to give a free quote.
00:30:04
Speaker
So if like the third, by the time the third quote comes, if it doesn't cover the expense of the other two free quotes, um,
00:30:11
Speaker
If that like third quote that I give that ends up as job, if it doesn't cover that, then I'm eventually going to run dry.
00:30:17
Speaker
Right.
00:30:18
Speaker
So you're, you're working with, I would guess relatively narrow margins, but you're, you're up against people who are, um, the, the, the race to the bottom approach fails them.
00:30:31
Speaker
And so you're able to sort of float above that.
00:30:35
Speaker
Right.
00:30:36
Speaker
Well, and like, uh, like your biggest differentiators is usually.
00:30:42
Speaker
People think that like just word of mouth will work or, um, cause the way junk works is it's about your ability to get there as soon as possible.
00:30:51
Speaker
Cause people are not going to talk about the fact that they haven't been able to park their car in their garage for 15 years because they can't let go of anything emotionally.
00:31:00
Speaker
Like that's just not going to come up in conversation.
00:31:03
Speaker
Right.
00:31:04
Speaker
So you have to find a way to get to them or for them to see you without, um,
00:31:11
Speaker
having someone else in between because like nine times out of ten like they just need the junk removed and if you can get there today or tomorrow that's when they need it because they finally like are fed up with it and what percentage of of these jobs would you say are like you know i just have an old washing machine i want to get rid of versus like
00:31:34
Speaker
my aunt is a hoarder and there's a you know i'm saying like a really like gnarly job uh like to i haven't had a hoarder house i had a hoarder house like two months ago and then before that had been three years
00:31:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:31:53
Speaker
Pretty rare.
00:31:53
Speaker
Yeah, they're pretty rare.
00:31:55
Speaker
And part of that is because if the person who has amassed all of this junk is still in the house, nothing's happening.
00:32:06
Speaker
So unless they get kicked out or they pass away, which is horrible, nothing's going to get dealt with.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:15
Speaker
So what's the average job then?
00:32:17
Speaker
Is it like cleaning out my garage?
00:32:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:21
Speaker
Is it like, do you do like slash removal, like from trees or stuff, or is it all kind of like junk, like garbage?
00:32:28
Speaker
I would say that 95% of it is just like junk garbage.
00:32:32
Speaker
And yeah, the clientele is middle class, upper middle class, someone who doesn't have a truck, or even if they have a truck, they don't want to spend the time to go to
00:32:43
Speaker
the dump or landfill or transfer station, wherever you are.
00:32:47
Speaker
They don't want to go do that.
00:32:49
Speaker
They know what their time is worth and they know that that isn't worth their time.
00:32:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:56
Speaker
So you've got the haul away fee that you charge.
00:33:02
Speaker
I know you also do some refurb and some resale of stuff that people are getting rid of, which you were talking about foreclosures.
00:33:10
Speaker
It seems like those would be
00:33:14
Speaker
a really good place to find usable things because it's like the homeowner isn't really throwing that stuff away.
00:33:22
Speaker
It's just sort of being abandoned, if that makes sense.
00:33:25
Speaker
So like, do you still have jobs like that?
00:33:27
Speaker
Or is it is it mostly things people are trying to actively trying to get out of their house?
Cost Reduction Strategies
00:33:36
Speaker
It's mostly stuff that like, okay, so think about like middle class of middle class, right?
00:33:40
Speaker
Like they, they
00:33:43
Speaker
Don't want clutter around their house.
00:33:44
Speaker
They'd rather have open spaces.
00:33:47
Speaker
When they get rid of things, that doesn't mean that they're not someone on lower income that is using it until it's last breath of life.
00:33:57
Speaker
Right.
00:33:57
Speaker
So majority of the time, I'd probably say like 75% of the time, there's a lot of usable items.
00:34:03
Speaker
Right.
00:34:05
Speaker
Right.
00:34:05
Speaker
Because like the, if someone is super tight on a budget, then they'll get a dumpster and then like, they'll fill a dumpster because that's like more bang for your buck because you want to save the labor costs.
00:34:17
Speaker
Like I don't, when someone hires us, I don't break it down to like, this is how much you spent, how much time we spend on job.
00:34:22
Speaker
This is your dump fee.
00:34:23
Speaker
Like they pay based on the volume it takes in the truck.
00:34:27
Speaker
Okay, that's your pricing structure is the truck volume?
00:34:30
Speaker
Yeah, right.
00:34:32
Speaker
So they pay based on the volume of the truck.
00:34:34
Speaker
Then our service is that we take it away from you.
00:34:40
Speaker
You don't have to worry about it after that.
00:34:43
Speaker
What we do with it after that is all up to us.
00:34:47
Speaker
Sure.
00:34:48
Speaker
Right?
00:34:48
Speaker
So there's plenty of things that I've...
00:34:54
Speaker
since I have always been a problem solver, like even when I worked in that plastics manufacturing plant, like I did start out to like trimming the like extra plastic off.
00:35:01
Speaker
But I, the problem was that I would be too fast.
00:35:04
Speaker
I would get it done and then I get bored and then I find another problem and I fix it, which led to like the manager just above me hated me because like he wanted things his way.
00:35:14
Speaker
But the owner loved me because I would like fix problems all over the place.
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:18
Speaker
Which is like typical management structure of how it goes.
00:35:21
Speaker
Like you probably have somebody who like hates you, but then like the big boss either like super loves you because you fix stuff with no like bureaucracy.
00:35:30
Speaker
And so then I would finish the tasks that I have.
00:35:32
Speaker
And then I would like the place we worked at had a machine shop that would make the molds and then the plastics.
00:35:38
Speaker
They would make the plastics also.
00:35:40
Speaker
So I would like go over there and I do stuff.
00:35:42
Speaker
Then by the time I was left there, I would put the molds in these machines, set all the get all the settings done and.
00:35:50
Speaker
and all that.
00:35:50
Speaker
So like I've always solved problems that has affected with my junk business that a lot of guys don't know where to take certain material, right?
00:35:58
Speaker
There's a place that will take Slash.
00:36:01
Speaker
We would, you get it Slash on occasion.
00:36:03
Speaker
And if on Saturday, if you donate canned food goods, it's a free dump.
00:36:07
Speaker
So then, yeah, so then we would just book that job for Friday or Saturday morning.
00:36:13
Speaker
and then fill up the truck with just tree branches or whatever, go there, hand them a bag of canned food.
00:36:18
Speaker
So instead of paying 35 to $65 for that dump, we're paying five bucks and we just dump it.
00:36:24
Speaker
And then there's a place that takes concrete for free because if it has no rebar, they take it, crush it down and sell it as road base.
00:36:34
Speaker
So, so then I would get jobs like that, that we would haul away concrete or we make a pile at our lot slowly as we got, cause we charge people by volume.
00:36:44
Speaker
We pay by weight.
00:36:46
Speaker
So if we lighten our load, then we pay less, right?
00:36:50
Speaker
So then I would slowly amass concrete pieces and bricks and whatever else or pavers or whatever people had.
00:36:57
Speaker
And then once that pile got big enough, then we would just take a slower time, load it in the truck, take it down there and dump it for free, right?
00:37:06
Speaker
So yeah, so I'd always be trying to like figure out ways to do stuff.
00:37:10
Speaker
And then the other things that you learn is
00:37:13
Speaker
Since you're servicing like middle class, like upper middle class, I did have a lot where I would store stuff to sell.
00:37:20
Speaker
Not always in clothes.
00:37:21
Speaker
Most of the time it was outside.
00:37:23
Speaker
But if it became too much or overwhelming, what I would do is I'd post it for free on Craigslist at the time.
00:37:30
Speaker
Now it would be Facebook Marketplace because that market has shifted.
00:37:37
Speaker
I like the carnival would show up.
00:37:39
Speaker
That's like the, like the most polite way to say it.
00:37:42
Speaker
Right.
00:37:43
Speaker
I would,
00:37:47
Speaker
Oh, I'll tell you the story.
00:37:48
Speaker
I had this huge lot.
00:37:50
Speaker
It was like right after I had done cleaning out foreclosed homes and I had saved everything because I was trying to sell everything to make ends meet.
00:37:56
Speaker
But I started the job at the plastic place and I was like, I need to clear up this lot.
00:38:00
Speaker
The owner of the property was like, this looks like a like a junkyard.
00:38:04
Speaker
And I'm like, I know, I'm sorry.
00:38:06
Speaker
Right.
00:38:06
Speaker
Like is what it is.
00:38:08
Speaker
It was a commercial lot, so it wasn't like anything, but he was kind of getting on my case.
00:38:12
Speaker
And so I posted on Craigslist that you could come and take anything from this time to this time.
00:38:19
Speaker
And these two guys, there was this gas weed eater, and they almost got in a fist fight over it.
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:30
Speaker
A little Black Friday at the Wickham house.
00:38:35
Speaker
It wasn't in my house.
00:38:36
Speaker
It was at that lot.
00:38:38
Speaker
Right, right, right.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:39
Speaker
But by the time, it was like a four-hour window.
00:38:41
Speaker
And within an hour, 99% of everything was gone.
00:38:46
Speaker
Wow.
00:38:47
Speaker
Right.
00:38:48
Speaker
Look at that.
00:38:49
Speaker
Coming and going.
00:38:49
Speaker
And that's got to be, I mean, another sort of differentiator from just anybody with a truck is having those connections of where to deploy all this stuff where people will actually...
00:39:03
Speaker
take it take it off your hands for free especially if you've got a like here our dump is free as long as you've got like a a piece of mail or something that's that's crazy yeah that's so so that's i mean that's got to be uh really really solid for for margins if you're in the junk hauling business here in this county right yeah
00:39:24
Speaker
Anyway, so when you're doing these estimates, are there particular types of jobs?
00:39:33
Speaker
I know you said that since you earn on volume, but you pay on weight, I would imagine like...
00:39:40
Speaker
A dryer is probably a pretty good deal because it's kind of a big hollow box.
00:39:46
Speaker
What are jobs that you view as like pay dirt where it's like it's relatively simple, you're making a lot of money, you got a lot of valuable resale, that kind of thing?
00:39:56
Speaker
Big, big furniture.
00:39:58
Speaker
So like if somebody, a pay dirt job is like,
00:40:02
Speaker
They are really particular and they have already amassed it all in their garage.
00:40:06
Speaker
They moved it all out of the house and put it in the garage in a nice pile.
00:40:10
Speaker
And then you back up and you say it's going to be a full load.
00:40:14
Speaker
Like my rates right now, like my minimum is 115 and a full truckload, which is 15 cubic yards is $600.
00:40:20
Speaker
Right.
00:40:24
Speaker
And I'm in the same ballpark as the franchise.
00:40:28
Speaker
The most expensive guy in town is like $650, and a couple of the other ones are right around $650.
00:40:33
Speaker
So I'm in the same ballpark.
00:40:37
Speaker
But you pull up to the job, and within 20 minutes, you have everything loaded in from the garage.
00:40:43
Speaker
They pay you $600, and you roll away, and it's maybe 600 pounds.
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:50
Speaker
Right?
00:40:50
Speaker
But you're there for 20 minutes to make $600.
00:40:52
Speaker
Those are like...
00:40:54
Speaker
great jobs.
00:40:55
Speaker
And then it's like nice furniture where you can like resell.
00:40:58
Speaker
Right.
00:40:59
Speaker
Right.
00:41:00
Speaker
So if you've got, if you've got mostly outdoor space where you're storing stuff, do you like just put tarps over the furniture?
00:41:06
Speaker
How do you, how do you store things that need to stay relatively nice?
00:41:10
Speaker
Well, I, I really wanted to get into like shipping containers, but they're really expensive.
00:41:15
Speaker
But what aren't expensive are when people take boxes off of box trucks, right?
Assessing Risk in Business Ventures
00:41:23
Speaker
How is that different from a shipping container?
00:41:24
Speaker
Maybe I'm not thinking the same thing you're thinking of.
00:41:27
Speaker
No, you think of a box truck.
00:41:28
Speaker
Like think of like a U-Haul or Penske box truck.
00:41:35
Speaker
when people take those boxes off as storage right but they're not as glamorous as a shipping container a shipping container like before covid was like two to four grand right but you could pick up one of those boxes for like 500 to a thousand easy so i would just know that yeah right so it's it does the same thing it does the same job but in the end it like looks different and people have a different mentality for it and it's not like
00:42:01
Speaker
a keyword that people look for.
00:42:03
Speaker
Well, I want a storage box or shipping container or whatever.
00:42:06
Speaker
Like they're looking for that.
00:42:08
Speaker
And so all these people flood whatever medium you're looking on with those.
00:42:12
Speaker
But if you look for like a box off a box truck, it's like pennies on the dollar.
00:42:17
Speaker
So.
00:42:18
Speaker
So do you still have like a, a like junkyard lot where you're keeping those things?
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:24
Speaker
And I have, I have a, like, I,
00:42:28
Speaker
I have two of those box truck boxes and then I traded one junk job a couple of years ago for like an onsite job, like job trailer.
00:42:38
Speaker
Have you ever seen those?
00:42:38
Speaker
Like they have a job site and they have that like work trailer, but like the manager's offices or like the project manager.
00:42:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:46
Speaker
I traded some work for one of those.
00:42:48
Speaker
So I have, I have that.
00:42:50
Speaker
And then I, I bought a shipping container from a friend and like a really good deal.
00:42:54
Speaker
Well, he wasn't using it,
00:42:56
Speaker
He owned a trash company.
00:42:57
Speaker
And I said, hey, what are you doing with that box?
00:42:58
Speaker
And he's like, nothing.
00:42:59
Speaker
And I was like, can I use it?
00:43:01
Speaker
He's like, sure.
00:43:02
Speaker
So they let me use it for a year.
00:43:03
Speaker
And then he's like, you want to buy that thing from me?
00:43:05
Speaker
I'm like, yeah.
00:43:06
Speaker
So then I bought it from him for like two grand.
00:43:09
Speaker
And I gave him a check.
00:43:10
Speaker
And then like a month later, he was like, I found the receipt for that.
00:43:13
Speaker
I paid five for it.
00:43:14
Speaker
And I was like, ooh.
00:43:19
Speaker
So yeah.
00:43:21
Speaker
I mean, kind of in the end, the way I've always gone about anything is...
00:43:26
Speaker
I wait until someone doesn't see value in something anymore.
00:43:29
Speaker
And then I ask about it.
00:43:31
Speaker
Right.
00:43:31
Speaker
And like, Hey, what are you doing with that?
00:43:33
Speaker
Oh, I don't care anymore.
00:43:33
Speaker
I'll like, and like the biggest example of that was when I was in high school is when iPods came out and I wanted a like Walkman that didn't skip.
Future Goals and Creative Pursuits
00:43:46
Speaker
Right.
00:43:46
Speaker
But like a month after iPods came out, all these middle class kids donated their Walkmans to the thrift store.
00:43:53
Speaker
And I paid like $5 for a Walkman when everyone else had iPod.
00:43:58
Speaker
So if you just wait, whatever the new new is, well, like no one's like in a couple of years, it's not the new new anymore, but it's still good.
00:44:07
Speaker
Right.
00:44:08
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:44:10
Speaker
So you're, you went from owning your job.
00:44:16
Speaker
to now you have a crew.
00:44:19
Speaker
What have been the biggest challenges and lessons learned from that step of the process when it's time to start hiring?
00:44:26
Speaker
The stress of, well, there's a couple, like there's lots of big things.
00:44:30
Speaker
The stress of when you hire somebody, you are committing to them that like you're going to generate enough work that they can pay their bills.
00:44:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:39
Speaker
Right.
00:44:39
Speaker
And maybe that isn't like maybe not all business owners feel that way because like some business owners will be like, well, like I'll pay you when the work's there, like whatever else is on you.
00:44:49
Speaker
But I also realize like I've had some pretty big instances in my life where I've seen how people have used me, but haven't paid me for what I'm worth.
00:45:01
Speaker
I mean, I got a good story about that when I was 18, but I don't know if you want to go down that rabbit hole.
00:45:05
Speaker
No, go ahead.
00:45:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:45:07
Speaker
So when I was 18, me and the kid that I had a lawn mowing business with, we needed a job to make money for our missions.
00:45:15
Speaker
And he got the job and me and him worked together.
00:45:19
Speaker
doing like trim work, carpenter work.
00:45:22
Speaker
And the guy who owned the business was a firefighter.
00:45:27
Speaker
So he'd have three days on, two days off, two days on, three days on, right?
00:45:31
Speaker
Like, so we would go to the job site and then when we first started working for him, he would just like, we wouldn't work the days he didn't work.
00:45:38
Speaker
But then like the demand, this was like before the crisis, it's like 2005, it was like the boom of like all the houses getting built before like the bottom fell out of the market, right?
00:45:49
Speaker
So it's like gangbusters all the time.
00:45:50
Speaker
And he just had too much work and he got to the point where he left us with the tools and we took it in our own vehicles and whatnot.
00:45:58
Speaker
But he was afraid that these two 18 year olds wouldn't be able to like only have 15 minute breaks every four hours, only have a 30 minute lunch.
00:46:05
Speaker
He was like worried about that.
00:46:07
Speaker
So he had other crews, the other plumbers, electricians that he knew because he'd been in the trades for 20 plus years watch us.
00:46:14
Speaker
And what happened was he was blown away because we only took 15 minute breaks.
00:46:18
Speaker
We only took a 30 minute lunch.
00:46:20
Speaker
We'd get all the work done.
00:46:22
Speaker
We packed up all the tools nice and tidy because we, me and my best friend had worked together.
00:46:27
Speaker
We like, we had owned our own equipment, done our own thing.
00:46:30
Speaker
Like we knew how to work together.
00:46:32
Speaker
We knew how to work efficient and he was paying us $10 an hour.
00:46:36
Speaker
One day we're going to Home Depot to get some more supplies.
00:46:39
Speaker
And I, like, I've never been afraid to ask a question.
00:46:41
Speaker
So I asked him, how much do you charge the building or the builder for our time?
00:46:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:48
Speaker
And he like, he just got real quiet.
00:46:50
Speaker
He wasn't going to answer the question.
00:46:52
Speaker
And I was like, but he didn't say no.
00:46:54
Speaker
He didn't say, no, I'm not going to answer.
00:46:56
Speaker
So I was like, well, that's still open.
00:46:58
Speaker
I'm going to keep going until you answer this.
00:47:01
Speaker
So eventually, eventually he answers.
00:47:05
Speaker
He says $75 an hour.
00:47:07
Speaker
And I think, oh, you know, like, well, right.
00:47:10
Speaker
It's high.
00:47:11
Speaker
But I also know like he has like insurance to pay for.
00:47:15
Speaker
He has to pay for his own time.
00:47:16
Speaker
He has to pay both of us.
00:47:17
Speaker
So I'm thinking $75 for the two of us.
00:47:18
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:47:19
Speaker
So then I asked, so I was like, so $75 for the two of us.
00:47:22
Speaker
And he's like, no, I charge $75 per person per hour.
00:47:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:27
Speaker
That, yeah, that's what I was thinking.
00:47:30
Speaker
Right.
00:47:30
Speaker
But that's not what I thought.
00:47:32
Speaker
I like immediately went like, oh, that's not, I mean, that's not too bad.
00:47:35
Speaker
Right.
00:47:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:39
Speaker
Yeah, man, that's, that's rough going.
00:47:43
Speaker
That's one of the things that we talk about in the group all the time is any any trade job any like labor job.
00:47:59
Speaker
someone's attitude toward a job like that is very much, in my experience, defined by whether they're talking about an employee or an owner operator.
00:48:09
Speaker
Because the guys who are like, oh yeah, the trades suck, they're backbreaking, you're gonna be worn out by the time you're 40 and you're gonna have no plan, it's gonna be a dead end.
00:48:22
Speaker
In my experience, that's mostly talking about like the employee experience.
00:48:28
Speaker
But the owner operator experience can be very lucrative.
00:48:32
Speaker
You can move on into, you know, you can scale it to where it's not your labor that you're paying for.
00:48:38
Speaker
You've got employees, you've got a crew.
00:48:39
Speaker
And I mean, as a matter of fact, one of our guys,
00:48:45
Speaker
has he grew up with some guys who there was four of them and they started a landscaping business like y'all did in high school and by the time that they pushed it out to their crews it was like four years or something five years where eventually their crews were handling everything and um they were pure management and they were like 22 but they like were managing this like minor landscaping empire
00:49:16
Speaker
So that's the stuff that I get excited about is like, how do you move into that kind of space?
00:49:23
Speaker
So for this business, the scaling challenge would be like, you can have a crew with you in the truck and you're there on the site.
00:49:36
Speaker
And then eventually you have the second truck and a supervisor whose job it is to, and that's like a whole different hiring challenge because the kind of person that makes a good supervisor is often, but not always the same type of person who's a really good like worker.
00:49:53
Speaker
there's, you know, there's trade offs there.
00:49:56
Speaker
And so I wanted to get your thoughts on on that experience.
00:49:59
Speaker
Have you have you thought about buying a second truck moving into that range of it?
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah, so I have I've actually done it.
00:50:07
Speaker
I've, I
00:50:10
Speaker
Let's see here, three years ago, maybe four years ago now, I knew the thing with junk is that it's temperamental.
00:50:18
Speaker
Like it's up and down
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00:50:19
Speaker
and up and down.
00:50:19
Speaker
Like it's not an even keel, steady all the time type of thing.
00:50:24
Speaker
And so I wanted to figure out how, and that's the hard part about hiring somebody, right?
00:50:27
Speaker
Like if you hire somebody, but like you're just basically they're like on call all the time, they're not making enough to like stick around.
00:50:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:37
Speaker
Right.
00:50:38
Speaker
Unless you do like a portion of the pay.
00:50:41
Speaker
Right.
00:50:42
Speaker
Like you get 30 percent of the job, which I like there's a tree guy that I know that does that.
00:50:46
Speaker
Like he gives 30 percent of the job to the guys that are on the job and they split it equally amongst themselves.
00:50:51
Speaker
Right.
00:50:51
Speaker
But their jobs are like eight grand.
00:50:54
Speaker
Right.
00:50:55
Speaker
So.
00:50:55
Speaker
Right.
00:50:56
Speaker
So it's a little bit.
00:50:56
Speaker
So if you get 10 percent of that, if there's three guys, like eight hundred dollars a day, like you can live on that.
00:51:01
Speaker
You can make that work.
00:51:03
Speaker
But, but my jobs aren't eight grand, right?
00:51:07
Speaker
So to change the way that my business worked, I got into dumpsters, I bought a truck and started buying dumpsters.
00:51:14
Speaker
And that what that shifted was it was like a weekly, like, consistent business.
00:51:20
Speaker
And that made it so that I can employ somebody and guarantee them like a good 30 hours a week.
00:51:27
Speaker
You know, sometimes we'd have more than 40 and you get like, time and a half and whatnot.
00:51:32
Speaker
But
00:51:33
Speaker
Like the, that's like the biggest thing is figuring out how to be steady enough and then like making that jump.
00:51:39
Speaker
Right.
00:51:39
Speaker
Cause then for a long time I was still the owner operator.
00:51:42
Speaker
I would still show up and I still go on jobs.
00:51:44
Speaker
But in the end, if you want growth, you really have to have, you gotta like, once you get a job figured out, you have to hand it to somebody.
00:51:53
Speaker
And then there's a couple of like key things on that.
00:51:55
Speaker
When you hand a job, right.
00:51:57
Speaker
Cause like as an owner operator, like you pretty much have like,
00:52:02
Speaker
20 hats on your head and you're trying to figure it all out at the same time.
00:52:05
Speaker
And it's like, you know, sometimes you're good at some stuff.
00:52:08
Speaker
Sometimes you're not good at some stuff.
00:52:10
Speaker
And then there's things that are like your natural Achilles tendon, right?
00:52:13
Speaker
Like mine is paperwork.
00:52:14
Speaker
I hate paperwork.
00:52:14
Speaker
I'm not good at it.
00:52:16
Speaker
Right.
00:52:17
Speaker
But I had thought like, there's plenty of people that want like a part-time job.
00:52:22
Speaker
So like, why don't I have, why don't I pay two separate people to do part-time work and do office stuff?
00:52:28
Speaker
where they take the calls every day, they answer the emails, they send property management, companies want you to send all their insurance and you have to fill out vendor packets and all this stuff.
00:52:38
Speaker
I could pay somebody to do that and someone would do that for $12 an hour or $12 to $15 an hour and what's my time worth?
00:52:46
Speaker
If I go out and own a job and I'm making $150 an hour for the business, then why would I not pay for an office manager?
00:52:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:57
Speaker
Right.
00:52:58
Speaker
And then what happens is that they become more efficient.
00:53:01
Speaker
But when you hire somebody like you have to understand that they're going to do 80 percent of what you would do.
00:53:06
Speaker
Right.
00:53:06
Speaker
They're they're not going to do what you like.
00:53:08
Speaker
They're not going to know everything that you know.
00:53:10
Speaker
So you have to like be willing to let it go and also have like realistic expectations.
00:53:16
Speaker
that they're not going to know everything.
00:53:17
Speaker
And the other hard part when you hire somebody is that like in your head is a map of everything that you do.
00:53:24
Speaker
Right.
00:53:24
Speaker
And you know, like where the bumps in the road are, you know, like what you got to avoid and like how to handle a cranky customer, but they don't know that.
00:53:34
Speaker
So they're going to run in the same hiccups.
00:53:36
Speaker
So you have to like, understand that when you hire somebody that
00:53:40
Speaker
they're going to have to learn what you've learned or you're going to have to teach them in a way so that they can avoid those or that when it does happen, you can say, this is why I was trying to explain it to you this way and not get mad at them.
00:53:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:53
Speaker
Right.
00:53:54
Speaker
So one of the advantages of going franchise in most industries, I don't know how this industry is, but one of the advantages of going franchise is that often they will have, um,
00:54:09
Speaker
dedicated software and infrastructure that takes care of some of those tasks for you so what has been what what has guided your decision making as far as staying independent versus going franchise um i mean i like i have had plenty of conversations where i'm just like so frustrated that i should have just done a franchise the problem that like
00:54:33
Speaker
I think franchises are great.
00:54:35
Speaker
I think like you, like they help you hit the ground running.
00:54:39
Speaker
The problem comes is that you have to look good to the bank to be able to have a franchise.
00:54:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:54:46
Speaker
Right?
00:54:46
Speaker
Like you, like you have to have, so most franchises, like I've looked at a bunch of franchises over the years now, and you have to have a set amount of assets that are like, like whether that be a home or whatever, you have to have a set amount of assets and then you have to have liquid cash on top of those assets.
00:55:03
Speaker
right and then like and then from there like say and then from there then they will like look at you as a candidate to being a franchisee um there are big big advantages for being a franchise right like i compete with national franchises and they get national franchise deals where like say like the radio stations here like the most popular ones are
00:55:31
Speaker
They're like a national company that has radio stations in each big city.
00:55:36
Speaker
Sure.
00:55:36
Speaker
And so when the franchise goes to that company, they say, we want this deal for our franchisees.
00:55:43
Speaker
And we will commit to buying this much airtime per year from you in all of these major cities.
00:55:52
Speaker
And so then they get a bulk deal price.
00:55:56
Speaker
Right.
00:55:56
Speaker
Right.
00:55:57
Speaker
Right.
00:55:58
Speaker
So there's definitely some, like, and so then they can advertise bigger and wider and stronger than you can as a little guy.
00:56:04
Speaker
And so that's why you have to use, like, guerrilla tactics, which is, like, what those bandit signs are.
00:56:10
Speaker
Right?
00:56:10
Speaker
No one, when I started that, nobody did that in town.
00:56:13
Speaker
And it, like...
00:56:15
Speaker
It shook up the market like the biggest guy in town took notice of me.
00:56:19
Speaker
He knew my uncle and was like, who is this guy that has these signs?
00:56:24
Speaker
And he's like, oh, you remember my nephew who I tried to get you to hire, but you didn't call him back?
00:56:28
Speaker
That's him.
00:56:29
Speaker
Like...
00:56:31
Speaker
So, so like if you have the capacity and have like, you know, say you, you did it like the traditional way in the sense that you went and got a job, you have a house and like, now you want to do your own thing because you're tired of like corporate bureaucracy.
00:56:46
Speaker
If you have like a steady income and like, and like have the own the house and all that stuff, like I would say go franchise because it, it, it would have saved, if I would have done franchise stuff, it would have saved me six years of trying to figure it out by myself.
00:57:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:01
Speaker
But at this point, since you have kind of those lessons learned in that rhythm, it's probably not worth the jump at this point.
00:57:08
Speaker
Right.
00:57:08
Speaker
It's not, I mean, it's not worth the jump.
00:57:10
Speaker
It would be nice to have like additional stuff and more help, but like...
00:57:16
Speaker
I don't know the franchise takes like they have franchise fees.
00:57:21
Speaker
So like sure, 1-800-GOT-JUNK it's 10% off the top, not after you pay, not all after your expenses like off the top.
00:57:28
Speaker
So if your business does yeah, a million dollars, you're paying them 100, you're cutting them 100 grand check.
00:57:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:37
Speaker
I have a guy who the reason I decided to reach out to you was
00:57:44
Speaker
one of my guys in the group was saying, he was thinking about a landscaping business.
00:57:48
Speaker
And then he says, ah, you know, I'm starting to think this junk hauling business might be the way to go.
00:57:52
Speaker
And, uh, so it's interesting to me that you have done landscaping and you moved into junk hauling too.
00:57:59
Speaker
Can you talk a little bit about what drove that decision?
00:58:02
Speaker
And, and if, if you, if you had somebody who was at the crossroads like that, why would you tell them to do this versus that?
00:58:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:11
Speaker
Uh,
00:58:12
Speaker
I mean, if one of your guys comes into my town, I'm going to be upset.
00:58:17
Speaker
He's a long way away.
00:58:18
Speaker
Don't worry about it.
00:58:21
Speaker
I say that because there was this guy who called last year and he was like, hey, I saw these bandit signs.
00:58:25
Speaker
Do those?
00:58:26
Speaker
Like, I'm thinking about starting a junk business.
00:58:28
Speaker
And I'm like, yeah, they work.
00:58:29
Speaker
But like, like they work.
00:58:31
Speaker
Step up.
00:58:32
Speaker
Yeah, they work well.
00:58:33
Speaker
But yeah.
00:58:34
Speaker
Well, then it turns out he was like, oh, yeah, well, I was moving here.
00:58:36
Speaker
He like moved here and started putting out signs.
00:58:38
Speaker
And I'm like, and then I met him at a networking group.
00:58:40
Speaker
And he's like, thanks for that tip.
00:58:41
Speaker
And I was like.
00:58:42
Speaker
dude.
00:58:44
Speaker
Just like... You're going to have to start a protection racket.
00:58:51
Speaker
Start smashing windows and stuff.
00:58:53
Speaker
Well, and like part... Yeah, like I don't do dirty business.
00:58:57
Speaker
Like that pisses me off.
00:58:59
Speaker
But if I was looking at the crossroads of like what I... What I look at with like businesses, I want to be... I want to figure out a way to...
00:59:10
Speaker
it to be simple, right?
00:59:12
Speaker
Like junk is really simple.
00:59:14
Speaker
Landscaping is not so simple.
00:59:16
Speaker
People can get really picky about it.
00:59:17
Speaker
And it's there forever.
00:59:19
Speaker
And like, you can get some really negative clients.
00:59:22
Speaker
Is there some high profit in it?
00:59:23
Speaker
Yeah, there's some like high profit.
00:59:25
Speaker
Does it take a while to like build it up so that you can have like your own crews and whatnot?
00:59:29
Speaker
Yes.
00:59:30
Speaker
Junk is really simple.
00:59:32
Speaker
Like there it is.
00:59:33
Speaker
People like want it gone.
00:59:35
Speaker
And
00:59:36
Speaker
in the end like the franchises have set the market where like people are willing to pay you know 500 to 700 dollars to get stuff removed and it's like if you can come in and haul it out in an hour then like what is it what does it look like per hour so then if you have like an hour and you have it
00:59:56
Speaker
Say it takes you two hours to make the $500 and it takes you another hour to go to the dump.
01:00:00
Speaker
And like, so you have three hours into it.
01:00:02
Speaker
What's the cost of the truck?
01:00:03
Speaker
Break that all down.
01:00:04
Speaker
And like what it averages out is like for two guys, if they've had like a really good day, then it averages out to like $150 an hour per guy, per hour.
01:00:14
Speaker
Yeah, but that's on a really good day.
01:00:16
Speaker
Not all days are like that.
01:00:17
Speaker
But the reason they have those good days is that you can float,
01:00:21
Speaker
on the other end.
01:00:21
Speaker
And things that I've done is I pay myself a set salary.
01:00:24
Speaker
If I had a good month, I'm not paying myself more.
01:00:28
Speaker
But I've looked into things like there's a big demand for demolition.
01:00:32
Speaker
So I looked into demolition.
01:00:34
Speaker
And here, if you were hauling out for a contractor, they'll only pay you $50 an hour.
01:00:40
Speaker
But there's a lot of risk.
01:00:41
Speaker
So the risk is the other part, which is the thing I would think for landscaping.
01:00:46
Speaker
How big is your risk?
01:00:48
Speaker
if you dig and you didn't call to get underwater lines or like power lines found out and you accidentally like clip an underground wire like you got to pay for that because you didn't because maybe your guy that you're training forgot to call the 811 or whatever number it is locally for them to come out and knock the underground lines so that's a lot of risk and if somebody's driving like an excavator or a bobcat and they accidentally back into the house
01:01:16
Speaker
or they like break the fence, like your risk is really high.
01:01:19
Speaker
So like, is the risk worth the reward when you're looking at junk?
01:01:24
Speaker
And like, I looked at moving too, because like moving, you can make good money too.
01:01:28
Speaker
But like, if you're moving someone's personal belongings, you have to load it in a truck, and then unload it somewhere else.
01:01:35
Speaker
And like, if you scuff it in any part of that, they're gonna like,
01:01:39
Speaker
want you to pay out of pocket or file an insurance claim.
01:01:43
Speaker
But like junk is like, you are literally like just picking it up and loading in a truck.
01:01:47
Speaker
And if it breaks along the way, they don't really care because they were ready to get rid of it.
01:01:51
Speaker
Right.
01:01:52
Speaker
Right.
01:01:52
Speaker
So like, yeah, that makes sense.
01:01:54
Speaker
You're trying to, you're trying to assess your risk as much as like your reward.
01:01:58
Speaker
So that's, that's what I would say is like, that's, that's what I look at.
01:02:03
Speaker
Okay.
01:02:04
Speaker
So what's the dream at this point?
01:02:06
Speaker
Like, are you pretty much where you want to be?
01:02:08
Speaker
Or what's the next kind of peak that you want to summit as far as this business?
01:02:15
Speaker
As far as this business?
01:02:17
Speaker
Or just you professionally?
01:02:20
Speaker
I don't know.
01:02:23
Speaker
What I'd really love to do is travel in an RV with my family around the country and just, like, enjoy life.
01:02:29
Speaker
That would be...
01:02:31
Speaker
That would be, man, we got an RV this year and same kind of thing.
01:02:36
Speaker
Someone was like, it was sitting, it was a junk client.
01:02:40
Speaker
So we got an RV, we tried it out, we drove to Texas and back.
01:02:43
Speaker
What I did not expect was getting five miles to the gallon.
01:02:47
Speaker
So I was a little, I was a little, not the,
01:02:55
Speaker
the prettiness rubbed off a little bit of that, of that.
01:03:00
Speaker
So I don't know.
01:03:01
Speaker
I, I think at this point I'm, I'm definitely at a crossroads on where I want to go.
01:03:05
Speaker
I know that I need to build this up a little bit more to like have it fully function by itself.
01:03:09
Speaker
I'm close.
01:03:10
Speaker
I have an office manager and then I have like an operations manager, but I don't have enough business coming in on a consistent basis to like float it over the winter.
01:03:19
Speaker
Right.
01:03:19
Speaker
I have enough to like keep everyone employed that I currently have employed and like,
01:03:24
Speaker
this next year will be like a big year.
01:03:25
Speaker
I was really, I was like ready to go before COVID and COVID through a, through like a big wrench in the works for us.
01:03:35
Speaker
So, yeah.
01:03:36
Speaker
Oh, well, that's, did you not get people who were like, cause I know, I know, uh, home improvement, uh,
01:03:42
Speaker
really went up during COVID because people were like stuck at home.
01:03:46
Speaker
So did you get people who were like, I'm stuck at home and I'm tired of looking at all this crap in my house?
01:03:51
Speaker
Yeah, but then they were like, I can just do it myself because I'm not doing anything else.
01:03:55
Speaker
Ah, yeah, that's true.
01:03:56
Speaker
So then at the dump, there was like a two mile long wait of cars.
01:04:02
Speaker
And it would be like someone with like a Honda Accord and their stuff just be like sticking out the windows in the trunk.
01:04:08
Speaker
It'd be something like six feet out the back of the trunk and they were just like,
01:04:12
Speaker
go dump stuff and and but majority of my business comes from those bandit signs and so if no one's driving around then i wasn't getting calls so like that would be the other yeah the other benefit in like uh a franchise is that the franchise has like they have the website covered they have seo like they like make sure that your local place like knows it really really well and
01:04:35
Speaker
I haven't been as good at that for a long time.
01:04:37
Speaker
I've gotten better and my website's gotten way better, but I, for a long time I didn't have online booking.
01:04:42
Speaker
I didn't have like all of these things that like maybe they don't add up to a ton, but like if you have them all in a line, it's a really good foundation.
01:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:04:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:53
Speaker
So there's been a lot that I've had to like adapt and change and figure out and, and, uh, go through it.
01:04:59
Speaker
But I like the crazy thing about junk is that people throw away perfectly good stuff.
01:05:03
Speaker
Like the shoes I'm like, I,
01:05:05
Speaker
The shoes I'm currently wearing are these like brand new Nike or Adidas shoes that we got two days ago.
01:05:11
Speaker
And like someone threw them away and I was like, they're brand new.
01:05:14
Speaker
They like it.
01:05:16
Speaker
Like, I'll just wear them.
01:05:17
Speaker
But you get stuff like all the time.
01:05:19
Speaker
I got a brand new dryer, like a three-year-old dryer, like commercial grade dryer, Maytag that this lady, her washer broke and she wanted a matching set.
01:05:30
Speaker
So she just had us take away the dryer.
01:05:34
Speaker
And it's perfectly fine.
01:05:36
Speaker
Like, I, like, donated it to a family who needed one, and we helped them install it.
01:05:44
Speaker
So, no, like, the thing I'd really like to do is I'd really like to do my art.
01:05:49
Speaker
I'd really like to do more metal sculptures, start getting into paintings, start doing the creative stuff that I've always kind of put on the back burner because I thought I had to provide only through work, like grunt work.
01:06:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:03
Speaker
I still have in my mission box.
01:06:06
Speaker
I have some official Ray Wickham graffiti.
01:06:10
Speaker
No way.
01:06:11
Speaker
I do.
01:06:12
Speaker
I do.
01:06:14
Speaker
With the West Memphis Bridge and the sunset.
01:06:18
Speaker
I remember that.
01:06:19
Speaker
You remember?
01:06:20
Speaker
I remember that.
01:06:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:23
Speaker
The longest bridge in the world.
01:06:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:25
Speaker
The longest bridge in the world.
01:06:26
Speaker
That's right, brother.
01:06:26
Speaker
Oh, man.
01:06:27
Speaker
Good job.
01:06:32
Speaker
Oh, man.
01:06:32
Speaker
Well, hey, man, it's been great talking to you.
01:06:35
Speaker
So I want to send people off with, so the art projects that you're doing, you're taking junk that you're finding and you are, what is it like, are you like actually like working metal or how are you repurposing the junk into art?
01:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I, when I got into dumpsters, I got, I didn't know how to weld.
01:06:59
Speaker
So I couldn't afford to pay a welder to fix a lot of stuff.
01:07:03
Speaker
So I taught myself through YouTube videos how to weld.
01:07:06
Speaker
And I had seen that if you want to make art that really like impacts people, it has to like be beyond words, right?
01:07:14
Speaker
Because like I was really big into graffiti.
01:07:16
Speaker
But then I had seen that the graffiti artists that like went really far were the ones that like painted people and painted people.
01:07:23
Speaker
things that cross the boundaries of language, right?
01:07:26
Speaker
So that is like some sort of imagery not associated with words.
01:07:30
Speaker
So then for a long time, I've wanted to do like metal sculptures.
01:07:33
Speaker
I've seen some pretty cool artists take stuff and make like animals out of scrap metal.
01:07:42
Speaker
And like, sometimes you see stuff where people are like, they don't like cut it or like reshape it.
01:07:46
Speaker
They just like plaster it onto another piece of metal and just weld it.
01:07:48
Speaker
And it looks like crap in my opinion.
01:07:51
Speaker
And so I wanted to like take my like detail oriented self.
01:07:55
Speaker
And so I started taking stuff like, um,
01:07:58
Speaker
The first one I did was a red-tailed hawk, which is like really common here in the West.
01:08:03
Speaker
And I took a wagon wheel and I like put what I had seen a million times on telephone poles and I did a red-tailed hawk inside this wagon wheel.
01:08:13
Speaker
And just, yeah, basically I'm just taking stuff and like,
01:08:18
Speaker
Or I took a... If you ever have a trench shovel, they're these long shovels, like if you're digging for a post hole.
01:08:26
Speaker
Sure.
01:08:26
Speaker
And I made a blue heron crane with that.
01:08:30
Speaker
But it was because I saw the back of a blue heron crane on the shovel head, and I thought, I should just make that.
01:08:35
Speaker
So then I...
01:08:36
Speaker
I made it.
01:08:37
Speaker
You're on, it's built from junk on Instagram and TikTok.
01:08:42
Speaker
So go check him out.
01:08:43
Speaker
He's actually, he's gone viral a couple of times on TikTok.
01:08:46
Speaker
And then if you're in the Colorado Springs area, junkremovenow.com, that's the business.
01:08:52
Speaker
And if you want to know more about what we do here at Exit, you can check us out at exitgroup.us.
01:08:56
Speaker
You can follow us on Twitter at exit underscore org.
01:09:00
Speaker
Or check out the podcast at exitgroup.podme.com.
01:09:03
Speaker
Ray, it was great talking to you, man.
01:09:04
Speaker
Thanks so much for coming.
01:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, man.
01:09:06
Speaker
Thanks for having me on.