Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Exit Podcast.
Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett.
Speaker: I'm joined here by Ray Whitcomb.
Speaker: Ray's a mission buddy of mine.
Speaker: He owns JunkRemoveNow.com, which is a junk hauling business out of Colorado Springs.
Speaker: I wanted to have him on the show to talk about how he turned a pickup truck into a successful small business.
Speaker: So welcome to the show, Ray.
Speaker: Hey, thanks.
Speaker: How you doing?
Speaker: I'm good, man.
Speaker: So first of all, tell us a little bit of how you got started and how you came up with the idea.
Speaker: I got started because my brother was doing it with a pickup truck and going to networking groups.
Speaker: And he got bored and wanted to do something else.
Speaker: But he was doing all under the table, making cash deals, and he just got bored with it.
Speaker: And he was like, I'm not going to do that anymore.
Speaker: And I thought, I could do that.
Speaker: It's easy.
Speaker: Like people point to a pile and you pick it up and haul it away.
Speaker: Not really too complicated.
Speaker: So you just scooped it up free and clear from your brother.
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.
Speaker: It was just the idea.
Speaker: And he didn't have any business entity, so there was no LLC, no...
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
Speaker: And there had to be some big money.
Speaker: If somebody goes into a franchise and starts doing something, there's enough money there to pay franchise fees and an owner
Speaker: And to pay for staff.
Speaker: So I knew that it wasn't like a bad idea.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I thought I can do that.
Speaker: So I went and got an LLC and insurance and all that other stuff and basically just copied what he was doing.
Speaker: Just go to networking meetings and go from there.
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?
Speaker: I mean, I've always hustled.
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.
Speaker: So I've always hustled.
Speaker: I never looked good on paper.
Speaker: I didn't finish high school.
Speaker: I like got my GED, right?
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.
Speaker: So the only really option I had is I've always hustled.
Speaker: So there is no other, there was never that option then.
Speaker: So did you, did you go, but did you go straight from this to, or straight from like zero to 60 on this?
Speaker: Or did you go like have it part-time for a while?
Speaker: No, no, no, no.
Speaker: That's like, I've never, I've never, I've never idled on top of a fence ever.
Speaker: Either I'm all in or all out.
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.
Speaker: But I think at the time I was doing like multi-level marketing crap and stuff.
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.
Speaker: I wasn't doing anything like anything big.
Speaker: And I had like owned my own business when I was like 13, 14 with my friends doing lawn care.
Speaker: So I knew that like you didn't always have to trade time for money that you could like
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.
Speaker: And so my brother was doing this.
Speaker: I asked like, well, what are you charging people?
Speaker: And he was charging people a couple hundred dollars for a truckload.
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.
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
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
Speaker: keeping a consistent business.
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.
Speaker: And, uh, they represent each, like each one of those individuals or those entities represent between like 50 to 500 properties.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: So the way, Oh,
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So the way I'd stay busy is them.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: So it's more than just individual people who have a mess.
Speaker: You've got like institutional customers that sort of have a steady stream of junk issues to handle.
Speaker: Right, yeah.
Speaker: And then it's just a math problem, right?
Speaker: Let's say that an average property manager does a job every two months.
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.
Speaker: And each one of those jobs could represent $500 to $1,000 depending on the job.
Speaker: So then you have somewhat of a steady income.
Speaker: But by volume, the majority of your work is going to be one...
Speaker: one time only never repeat.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So yeah.
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.
Speaker: But I, I, uh, I got it going and I was doing okay.
Speaker: Not necessarily thriving, but I was still alive and like we were keeping the business alive.
Speaker: And I met a guy at the dump who, uh,
Speaker: who was a subcontractor of a subcontractor.
Speaker: Basically, he worked for the banks and he hauled away stuff out of foreclosed homes.
Speaker: And he said, hey, would you like to work for me?
Speaker: And I was like, well, maybe what's, you know, what does it take?
Speaker: And he's like, well, we have so much work I can't keep up with.
Speaker: And at the time I was so hungry for that.
Speaker: I thought, oh, that would be a great idea.
Speaker: Let's do that.
Speaker: But I was really naive as to what that meant.
Speaker: Okay.
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.
Speaker: So my wife was hesitant, but I was like, Oh, it'll be fine.
Speaker: It'll be great.
Speaker: I should have listened to her.
Speaker: But the way it worked was net 90 day pay.
Speaker: So I didn't get paid from the first job till three months after I had done it.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I had never had a credit card in my life till then.
Speaker: And I got a credit card to float the expenses.
Speaker: Yeah, you can see where this is going.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: This was, uh, this was like eight years ago now.
Speaker: So, um, like 2012, 13 range.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: So I, um,
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.
Speaker: No way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I was, but it was, but it's a, it's a different game.
Speaker: It's a volume game, right?
Speaker: The largest animal.
Speaker: in the world eats the smallest thing, right?
Speaker: Like the large corporations make the smallest like little profit like millions over, right?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So I'm thinking, okay, it's a volume game.
Speaker: But they didn't just have us do junk.
Speaker: They also had us do like cleaning of the property, mowing the lawn, and you had to take pictures of all of it.
Speaker: And like because I was not his only subcontractor, he would give me the crap that was like three hours away.
Speaker: So then I –
Speaker: Yeah, so then I have to drive with my crew three hours away, try to do the job in one day.
Speaker: And if it didn't do it in one day, we had to go back like the next day, right?
Speaker: So like totally negative things.
Speaker: So after six months, I'm like, I've depleted my wife's life savings.
Speaker: I've depleted my savings.
Speaker: Like we are...
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 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
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I, I came to a quick reality of what I had done.
Speaker: And so I decided that I had to, I had to find a job.
Speaker: I had to find something.
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.
Speaker: And he said, well, I don't have a job.
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.
Speaker: So show up on Wednesday.
Speaker: This was Saturday.
Speaker: Show up on Wednesday.
Speaker: I'll have a job created for you.
Speaker: I went in on Wednesday.
Speaker: We've looked at all of my bills and what I had to make every month.
Speaker: So then he paid me more than like the normal starting person so that I could cover all of my bills.
Speaker: I think I had $50 extra a month.
Speaker: for that time.
Speaker: And I don't know if you know anything about plastics manufacturing, but it is mindless work.
Speaker: Like there are these big machines that put plastic pellets in through a screw and it comes into molds, right?
Speaker: And if it's set right, that machine can run all night.
Speaker: and it'll have like 10 to 20 parts pop out of the machine every cycle.
Speaker: And those cycles can be like three seconds to a minute and a half, depending on the size of the part.
Speaker: So in the morning when I'd come in, that machine had run all night.
Speaker: And if the machine doesn't close properly,
Speaker: on the edges of where the two sides come together, it'll have what's called flashing.
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.
Speaker: And it's pallet size, like four foot by four foot, four feet tall.
Speaker: And so there'd be like six gaylords of plastic parts.
Speaker: And you would, I'd have, I'd have,
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.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Brutal.
Speaker: Brutal.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I worked there for a year.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So like so this happens for six months and I'm like I worked there for a year.
Speaker: But what like what I learned in high school was that if my hands were busy, then I could absorb material.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like and so what I did in high school is I drew graffiti all day and that's how I absorbed what was being taught in class.
Speaker: Because when I went and took my GED test, the lady was like, it took me like 15 minutes to take the test.
Speaker: She's like, why are you here?
Speaker: And I was like, what do you mean?
Speaker: I hate coming to school.
Speaker: Homework, I think, is optional.
Speaker: And so is attendance.
Speaker: So what do you mean?
Speaker: I know exactly why I'm here.
Speaker: And she was like, no, no, no.
Speaker: You passed this test with flying colors in 15 minutes.
Speaker: Why are you here?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I was like, well, because the school doesn't teach the way I learn.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: I would just answer the question and continue drawing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it wasn't that I didn't understand the material.
Speaker: It was just that like.
Speaker: the way I learned wasn't fitted for the way school works.
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.
Speaker: And I would just like, I basically got paid for like a school at like a business education.
Speaker: So I just listened to stuff and then I would like pause it and
Speaker: At the table, I'd be out there, be like five other people.
Speaker: And then I would like unplug my headphones and then I would just start talking about ideas and like, what about this?
Speaker: And some of the people would be interested, other people wouldn't.
Speaker: But that like, at the end of that year, I sat down with a business consultant and I rebranded as Junk Removed Now.
Speaker: And one of the big things that he told me to do was these little bandit signs.
Speaker: Right, because I, like, junk removal is seasonal, especially in Colorado or anywhere that has, like, a real winter.
Speaker: So once the snow falls, then people, like, no one's going to mess with the stuff they have in their backyard, like,
Speaker: Like the only people that you'll have are your like commercial clients, like the property managers and real estate agents.
Speaker: So you'll have, you'll like make just enough to scrape by.
Speaker: And then winter is like your like spring and summer is like gangbusters where you make all your profit.
Speaker: And if you're smart, you stack it and then you float through the winter.
Speaker: That's just, yeah.
Speaker: the cycle that it goes through.
Speaker: So I quit working plastics in November.
Speaker: Like it had been a year.
Speaker: And I sat down with a business consultant and he was like, do these little bandit signs.
Speaker: And I'm like, there's no, like, so I ordered the signs.
Speaker: It takes them like six weeks to get to me.
Speaker: And I'm like, I'd spent a lot of money, right?
Speaker: Because at this point when I was working for plastics, I was making $500 a week.
Speaker: I was making two grand a month, which is like,
Speaker: Barely nothing.
Speaker: We didn't live in the fanciest apartment, right?
Speaker: Like, like I've, like I've always had, yeah, we just made, made do with it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So then I get these signs and I'm like, I don't think they're going to work.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Got used diabetic strips, those things.
Speaker: Yeah, like the same.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which, you know, you see them everywhere.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which was the same, like same.
Speaker: I was like, there's no way that those signs work, but this guy who, this consultant,
Speaker: He's a serial entrepreneur.
Speaker: He owned like five businesses at the time and they all ran all making money.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like he knows something that I don't know.
Speaker: So like in the end, that was like the conversation my wife had with me.
Speaker: She was like, Ray, like he wouldn't lead you astray.
Speaker: He's like, he didn't like, he didn't,
Speaker: He was like a friend of mine, right?
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.
Speaker: This is how you, like, this is how, what I would do in your situation.
Speaker: And it was just like a 20 minute meeting.
Speaker: And he brought up these signs.
Speaker: He's like, you should do them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: As far as like low cost, I think it cost me like $350, right.
Speaker: Which at the time was like eight months of savings.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it was like a big deal for me.
Speaker: So we ordered these signs and I put out a couple.
Speaker: I don't get anything.
Speaker: And she was like, and my wife was like, you know, you really just put out a ton.
Speaker: So I put out 20 signs.
Speaker: And then in the next 10 days, I did three grand in business.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I went like, I made like a month's salary in like a week and a half.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
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?
Speaker: Well, no, it was, it's a combination, right?
Speaker: So like, so when I first started, I thought I knew, I thought I had all my crap together.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then me taking on that contract showed me I did not know what I needed to know.
Speaker: And then listening to those business books and business podcasts opened me to like a completely different view of the world.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I would say, you know, so I just did my MBA and it was a remote job.
Speaker: for the last half of it because of COVID.
Speaker: And I would say, based on the types of books and podcasts that I'm involved in now and reading,
Speaker: It's basically the same.
Speaker: Like, you basically got the MBA experience.
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.
Speaker: But as far as the education itself, what they, like, tell you they're teaching you, it's a joke.
Speaker: You can get it from podcasts, 100%.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So, so how do you, th is 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?
Speaker: Ooh, good.
Speaker: This is a, this is a good rabbit hole.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Um, well,
Speaker: I have four kids and they're all very different.
Speaker: My first child is like center stage, super like ADHD, has a really hard time sitting in a chair.
Speaker: Like really hard time.
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.
Speaker: So he loves documentaries because I love watching documentaries and then he would watch them with me.
Speaker: And so then he learns about stuff.
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.
Speaker: And every time one of those visitors came, they would say, you could take my job.
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
Speaker: So he should have been held back and wasn't, right?
Speaker: So he's had a lot of issues.
Speaker: And then my second child is, we call, like, he's really good at finding loopholes.
Speaker: Okay.
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,
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: So that he could do whatever he wanted.
Speaker: Not that he actually didn't know.
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?
Speaker: Like he was two years old.
Speaker: I was driving a class B CDL truck, right?
Speaker: So it's like, it's a big medium duty truck and I'm driving and it's a standard car.
Speaker: And he's two years old and all he's doing is watching my hands and my feet.
Speaker: And I'm like, what are you?
Speaker: And I asked him, what are you doing?
Speaker: And he said, I'm learning how to drive.
Speaker: And I was like, what?
Speaker: And he is, he's that sharp.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: I've always been really good at that.
Speaker: But I got left in the dust by school.
Speaker: And so for a long time, I was like, F school.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So where we're at now is we're at we're doing homeschooling, which has been its own adventure.
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.
Speaker: Good for y'all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What curriculum do you use?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Wife's hand on that one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, she'll talk to me about stuff and then she'll say like, I don't know how to teach them this.
Speaker: And I, my boys are a lot like me, so I know how to teach them that.
Speaker: But then it's like I'm working and she's with the kids.
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?
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: I don't need to try anything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And my boys are not like that.
Speaker: There's a rule.
Speaker: I'm going to try to break it.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: So it's been a learning curve for both of us.
Speaker: I know that school wouldn't be good, but...
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.
Speaker: But we also know that the school, the way it's designed, like the teacher's hands are cuffed.
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.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: Sure.
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,
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.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I had a conversation recently with a, a friend of mine who is developing a homeschool curriculum himself.
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,
Speaker: they don't do school basically.
Speaker: Their kids at the end of like the K-12 timeframe, they test about a year behind.
Speaker: So if you do nothing, if you do zero at all, your kids on average are going to end up one year behind.
Speaker: And so like, yeah,
Speaker: So the odds that by deliberately actively homeschooling them, you're going to do worse than the public school system, it's zero.
Speaker: There's no way.
Speaker: And that's borne out by all kinds of research.
Speaker: So that's awesome that you guys are jumping into that world.
Speaker: Our oldest is seven, so we're pretty new to that scene.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: But it's a lot of fun.
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.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's cool, but it also suggests that you're vulnerable to being kind of poached by new entrants.
Speaker: So is there a way to protect your profit margins?
Speaker: How do you differentiate yourself from any other guy with a pickup truck who might want to do this?
Speaker: The biggest way you can differentiate yourself is price.
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.
Speaker: And to get a new transmission at the time cost like three grand.
Speaker: I didn't have three grand, right?
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,
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the, like what happens with people is yes, like the buy-in to do junk removal is very low.
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.
Speaker: But in the end, like anything that constantly moves breaks, right?
Speaker: So most of the people are driving like a piece of used equipment.
Speaker: And if they continue to run it,
Speaker: then it will eventually break.
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.
Speaker: He told me you should charge as much or more than the franchises.
Speaker: And I said, there's no way, no way someone's gonna pay that, right?
Speaker: And he's like, no, no, you don't understand.
Speaker: If you raise your prices, you isolate yourself from a lot of the people that would be your headaches.
Speaker: The people that expect everything but don't want to pay anything.
Speaker: You automatically out yourself from that.
Speaker: And then if you try to fight on price and do a race to the bottom, and I've watched it.
Speaker: I mean I've been in this for eight years, right?
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.
Speaker: And they, what happens is everyone hears that they're the cheapest and sure, I lose business, right?
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
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?
Speaker: And then they don't have the funds to be able to fix it.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: Hmm.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: So know that like, it actually cost me $75 to show up on someone's doorstep to give a free quote.
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,
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.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: And so you're able to sort of float above that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, and like, uh, like your biggest differentiators is usually.
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.
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.
Speaker: Like that's just not going to come up in conversation.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you have to find a way to get to them or for them to see you without, um,
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
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
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Pretty rare.
Speaker: Yeah, they're pretty rare.
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.
Speaker: So unless they get kicked out or they pass away, which is horrible, nothing's going to get dealt with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So what's the average job then?
Speaker: Is it like cleaning out my garage?
Speaker: Yeah.
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?
Speaker: I would say that 95% of it is just like junk garbage.
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
Speaker: the dump or landfill or transfer station, wherever you are.
Speaker: They don't want to go do that.
Speaker: They know what their time is worth and they know that that isn't worth their time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you've got the haul away fee that you charge.
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.
Speaker: It seems like those would be
Speaker: a really good place to find usable things because it's like the homeowner isn't really throwing that stuff away.
Speaker: It's just sort of being abandoned, if that makes sense.
Speaker: So like, do you still have jobs like that?
Speaker: Or is it is it mostly things people are trying to actively trying to get out of their house?
Speaker: It's mostly stuff that like, okay, so think about like middle class of middle class, right?
Speaker: Like they, they
Speaker: Don't want clutter around their house.
Speaker: They'd rather have open spaces.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So majority of the time, I'd probably say like 75% of the time, there's a lot of usable items.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
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.
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.
Speaker: This is your dump fee.
Speaker: Like they pay based on the volume it takes in the truck.
Speaker: Okay, that's your pricing structure is the truck volume?
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: So they pay based on the volume of the truck.
Speaker: Then our service is that we take it away from you.
Speaker: You don't have to worry about it after that.
Speaker: What we do with it after that is all up to us.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So there's plenty of things that I've...
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.
Speaker: But I, the problem was that I would be too fast.
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.
Speaker: But the owner loved me because I would like fix problems all over the place.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is like typical management structure of how it goes.
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.
Speaker: And so then I would finish the tasks that I have.
Speaker: And then I would like the place we worked at had a machine shop that would make the molds and then the plastics.
Speaker: They would make the plastics also.
Speaker: So I would like go over there and I do stuff.
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.
Speaker: and all that.
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?
Speaker: There's a place that will take Slash.
Speaker: We would, you get it Slash on occasion.
Speaker: And if on Saturday, if you donate canned food goods, it's a free dump.
Speaker: So then, yeah, so then we would just book that job for Friday or Saturday morning.
Speaker: and then fill up the truck with just tree branches or whatever, go there, hand them a bag of canned food.
Speaker: So instead of paying 35 to $65 for that dump, we're paying five bucks and we just dump it.
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.
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.
Speaker: We pay by weight.
Speaker: So if we lighten our load, then we pay less, right?
Speaker: So then I would slowly amass concrete pieces and bricks and whatever else or pavers or whatever people had.
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?
Speaker: So yeah, so I'd always be trying to like figure out ways to do stuff.
Speaker: And then the other things that you learn is
Speaker: Since you're servicing like middle class, like upper middle class, I did have a lot where I would store stuff to sell.
Speaker: Not always in clothes.
Speaker: Most of the time it was outside.
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.
Speaker: Now it would be Facebook Marketplace because that market has shifted.
Speaker: I like the carnival would show up.
Speaker: That's like the, like the most polite way to say it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I would,
Speaker: Oh, I'll tell you the story.
Speaker: I had this huge lot.
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.
Speaker: But I started the job at the plastic place and I was like, I need to clear up this lot.
Speaker: The owner of the property was like, this looks like a like a junkyard.
Speaker: And I'm like, I know, I'm sorry.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like is what it is.
Speaker: It was a commercial lot, so it wasn't like anything, but he was kind of getting on my case.
Speaker: And so I posted on Craigslist that you could come and take anything from this time to this time.
Speaker: And these two guys, there was this gas weed eater, and they almost got in a fist fight over it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A little Black Friday at the Wickham house.
Speaker: It wasn't in my house.
Speaker: It was at that lot.
Speaker: Right, right, right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But by the time, it was like a four-hour window.
Speaker: And within an hour, 99% of everything was gone.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: Coming and going.
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...
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
Speaker: Anyway, so when you're doing these estimates, are there particular types of jobs?
Speaker: I know you said that since you earn on volume, but you pay on weight, I would imagine like...
Speaker: A dryer is probably a pretty good deal because it's kind of a big hollow box.
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?
Speaker: Big, big furniture.
Speaker: So like if somebody, a pay dirt job is like,
Speaker: They are really particular and they have already amassed it all in their garage.
Speaker: They moved it all out of the house and put it in the garage in a nice pile.
Speaker: And then you back up and you say it's going to be a full load.
Speaker: Like my rates right now, like my minimum is 115 and a full truckload, which is 15 cubic yards is $600.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I'm in the same ballpark as the franchise.
Speaker: The most expensive guy in town is like $650, and a couple of the other ones are right around $650.
Speaker: So I'm in the same ballpark.
Speaker: But you pull up to the job, and within 20 minutes, you have everything loaded in from the garage.
Speaker: They pay you $600, and you roll away, and it's maybe 600 pounds.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: But you're there for 20 minutes to make $600.
Speaker: Those are like...
Speaker: great jobs.
Speaker: And then it's like nice furniture where you can like resell.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
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?
Speaker: How do you, how do you store things that need to stay relatively nice?
Speaker: Well, I, I really wanted to get into like shipping containers, but they're really expensive.
Speaker: But what aren't expensive are when people take boxes off of box trucks, right?
Speaker: How is that different from a shipping container?
Speaker: Maybe I'm not thinking the same thing you're thinking of.
Speaker: No, you think of a box truck.
Speaker: Like think of like a U-Haul or Penske box truck.
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
Speaker: a keyword that people look for.
Speaker: Well, I want a storage box or shipping container or whatever.
Speaker: Like they're looking for that.
Speaker: And so all these people flood whatever medium you're looking on with those.
Speaker: But if you look for like a box off a box truck, it's like pennies on the dollar.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: So do you still have like a, a like junkyard lot where you're keeping those things?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I have, I have a, like, I,
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.
Speaker: Have you ever seen those?
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I traded some work for one of those.
Speaker: So I have, I have that.
Speaker: And then I, I bought a shipping container from a friend and like a really good deal.
Speaker: Well, he wasn't using it,
Speaker: He owned a trash company.
Speaker: And I said, hey, what are you doing with that box?
Speaker: And he's like, nothing.
Speaker: And I was like, can I use it?
Speaker: He's like, sure.
Speaker: So they let me use it for a year.
Speaker: And then he's like, you want to buy that thing from me?
Speaker: I'm like, yeah.
Speaker: So then I bought it from him for like two grand.
Speaker: And I gave him a check.
Speaker: And then like a month later, he was like, I found the receipt for that.
Speaker: I paid five for it.
Speaker: And I was like, ooh.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: I mean, kind of in the end, the way I've always gone about anything is...
Speaker: I wait until someone doesn't see value in something anymore.
Speaker: And then I ask about it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And like, Hey, what are you doing with that?
Speaker: Oh, I don't care anymore.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But like a month after iPods came out, all these middle class kids donated their Walkmans to the thrift store.
Speaker: And I paid like $5 for a Walkman when everyone else had iPod.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So you're, you went from owning your job.
Speaker: to now you have a crew.
Speaker: What have been the biggest challenges and lessons learned from that step of the process when it's time to start hiring?
Speaker: The stress of, well, there's a couple, like there's lots of big things.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: No, go ahead.
Speaker: Okay.
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.
Speaker: And he got the job and me and him worked together.
Speaker: doing like trim work, carpenter work.
Speaker: And the guy who owned the business was a firefighter.
Speaker: So he'd have three days on, two days off, two days on, three days on, right?
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.
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?
Speaker: So it's like gangbusters all the time.
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.
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.
Speaker: He was like worried about that.
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.
Speaker: And what happened was he was blown away because we only took 15 minute breaks.
Speaker: We only took a 30 minute lunch.
Speaker: We'd get all the work done.
Speaker: We packed up all the tools nice and tidy because we, me and my best friend had worked together.
Speaker: We like, we had owned our own equipment, done our own thing.
Speaker: Like we knew how to work together.
Speaker: We knew how to work efficient and he was paying us $10 an hour.
Speaker: One day we're going to Home Depot to get some more supplies.
Speaker: And I, like, I've never been afraid to ask a question.
Speaker: So I asked him, how much do you charge the building or the builder for our time?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he like, he just got real quiet.
Speaker: He wasn't going to answer the question.
Speaker: And I was like, but he didn't say no.
Speaker: He didn't say, no, I'm not going to answer.
Speaker: So I was like, well, that's still open.
Speaker: I'm going to keep going until you answer this.
Speaker: So eventually, eventually he answers.
Speaker: He says $75 an hour.
Speaker: And I think, oh, you know, like, well, right.
Speaker: It's high.
Speaker: But I also know like he has like insurance to pay for.
Speaker: He has to pay for his own time.
Speaker: He has to pay both of us.
Speaker: So I'm thinking $75 for the two of us.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: So then I asked, so I was like, so $75 for the two of us.
Speaker: And he's like, no, I charge $75 per person per hour.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That, yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But that's not what I thought.
Speaker: I like immediately went like, oh, that's not, I mean, that's not too bad.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, man, that's, that's rough going.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: In my experience, that's mostly talking about like the employee experience.
Speaker: But the owner operator experience can be very lucrative.
Speaker: You can move on into, you know, you can scale it to where it's not your labor that you're paying for.
Speaker: You've got employees, you've got a crew.
Speaker: And I mean, as a matter of fact, one of our guys,
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
Speaker: So that's the stuff that I get excited about is like, how do you move into that kind of space?
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.
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.
Speaker: there's, you know, there's trade offs there.
Speaker: And so I wanted to get your thoughts on on that experience.
Speaker: Have you have you thought about buying a second truck moving into that range of it?
Speaker: Yeah, so I have I've actually done it.
Speaker: I've, I
Speaker: Let's see here, three years ago, maybe four years ago now, I knew the thing with junk is that it's temperamental.
Speaker: Like it's up and down and up and down.
Speaker: Like it's not an even keel, steady all the time type of thing.
Speaker: And so I wanted to figure out how, and that's the hard part about hiring somebody, right?
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Unless you do like a portion of the pay.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like you get 30 percent of the job, which I like there's a tree guy that I know that does that.
Speaker: Like he gives 30 percent of the job to the guys that are on the job and they split it equally amongst themselves.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But their jobs are like eight grand.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it's a little bit.
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.
Speaker: You can make that work.
Speaker: But, but my jobs aren't eight grand, right?
Speaker: So to change the way that my business worked, I got into dumpsters, I bought a truck and started buying dumpsters.
Speaker: And that what that shifted was it was like a weekly, like, consistent business.
Speaker: And that made it so that I can employ somebody and guarantee them like a good 30 hours a week.
Speaker: You know, sometimes we'd have more than 40 and you get like, time and a half and whatnot.
Speaker: But
Speaker: Like the, that's like the biggest thing is figuring out how to be steady enough and then like making that jump.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Cause then for a long time I was still the owner operator.
Speaker: I would still show up and I still go on jobs.
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.
Speaker: And then there's a couple of like key things on that.
Speaker: When you hand a job, right.
Speaker: Cause like as an owner operator, like you pretty much have like,
Speaker: 20 hats on your head and you're trying to figure it all out at the same time.
Speaker: And it's like, you know, sometimes you're good at some stuff.
Speaker: Sometimes you're not good at some stuff.
Speaker: And then there's things that are like your natural Achilles tendon, right?
Speaker: Like mine is paperwork.
Speaker: I hate paperwork.
Speaker: I'm not good at it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But I had thought like, there's plenty of people that want like a part-time job.
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?
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.
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?
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?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then what happens is that they become more efficient.
Speaker: But when you hire somebody like you have to understand that they're going to do 80 percent of what you would do.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They're they're not going to do what you like.
Speaker: They're not going to know everything that you know.
Speaker: So you have to like be willing to let it go and also have like realistic expectations.
Speaker: that they're not going to know everything.
Speaker: And the other hard part when you hire somebody is that like in your head is a map of everything that you do.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: So they're going to run in the same hiccups.
Speaker: So you have to like, understand that when you hire somebody that
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
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,
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
Speaker: I think franchises are great.
Speaker: I think like you, like they help you hit the ground running.
Speaker: The problem comes is that you have to look good to the bank to be able to have a franchise.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Right?
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.
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
Speaker: They're like a national company that has radio stations in each big city.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And so when the franchise goes to that company, they say, we want this deal for our franchisees.
Speaker: And we will commit to buying this much airtime per year from you in all of these major cities.
Speaker: And so then they get a bulk deal price.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: And so that's why you have to use, like, guerrilla tactics, which is, like, what those bandit signs are.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: No one, when I started that, nobody did that in town.
Speaker: And it, like...
Speaker: It shook up the market like the biggest guy in town took notice of me.
Speaker: He knew my uncle and was like, who is this guy that has these signs?
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?
Speaker: That's him.
Speaker: Like...
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.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's not, I mean, it's not worth the jump.
Speaker: It would be nice to have like additional stuff and more help, but like...
Speaker: I don't know the franchise takes like they have franchise fees.
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.
Speaker: So if your business does yeah, a million dollars, you're paying them 100, you're cutting them 100 grand check.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have a guy who the reason I decided to reach out to you was
Speaker: one of my guys in the group was saying, he was thinking about a landscaping business.
Speaker: And then he says, ah, you know, I'm starting to think this junk hauling business might be the way to go.
Speaker: And, uh, so it's interesting to me that you have done landscaping and you moved into junk hauling too.
Speaker: Can you talk a little bit about what drove that decision?
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?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: I mean, if one of your guys comes into my town, I'm going to be upset.
Speaker: He's a long way away.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: I say that because there was this guy who called last year and he was like, hey, I saw these bandit signs.
Speaker: Do those?
Speaker: Like, I'm thinking about starting a junk business.
Speaker: And I'm like, yeah, they work.
Speaker: But like, like they work.
Speaker: Step up.
Speaker: Yeah, they work well.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: Well, then it turns out he was like, oh, yeah, well, I was moving here.
Speaker: He like moved here and started putting out signs.
Speaker: And I'm like, and then I met him at a networking group.
Speaker: And he's like, thanks for that tip.
Speaker: And I was like.
Speaker: dude.
Speaker: Just like... You're going to have to start a protection racket.
Speaker: Start smashing windows and stuff.
Speaker: Well, and like part... Yeah, like I don't do dirty business.
Speaker: Like that pisses me off.
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...
Speaker: it to be simple, right?
Speaker: Like junk is really simple.
Speaker: Landscaping is not so simple.
Speaker: People can get really picky about it.
Speaker: And it's there forever.
Speaker: And like, you can get some really negative clients.
Speaker: Is there some high profit in it?
Speaker: Yeah, there's some like high profit.
Speaker: Does it take a while to like build it up so that you can have like your own crews and whatnot?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Junk is really simple.
Speaker: Like there it is.
Speaker: People like want it gone.
Speaker: And
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
Speaker: Say it takes you two hours to make the $500 and it takes you another hour to go to the dump.
Speaker: And like, so you have three hours into it.
Speaker: What's the cost of the truck?
Speaker: Break that all down.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, but that's on a really good day.
Speaker: Not all days are like that.
Speaker: But the reason they have those good days is that you can float,
Speaker: on the other end.
Speaker: And things that I've done is I pay myself a set salary.
Speaker: If I had a good month, I'm not paying myself more.
Speaker: But I've looked into things like there's a big demand for demolition.
Speaker: So I looked into demolition.
Speaker: And here, if you were hauling out for a contractor, they'll only pay you $50 an hour.
Speaker: But there's a lot of risk.
Speaker: So the risk is the other part, which is the thing I would think for landscaping.
Speaker: How big is your risk?
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
Speaker: or they like break the fence, like your risk is really high.
Speaker: So like, is the risk worth the reward when you're looking at junk?
Speaker: And like, I looked at moving too, because like moving, you can make good money too.
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.
Speaker: And like, if you scuff it in any part of that, they're gonna like,
Speaker: want you to pay out of pocket or file an insurance claim.
Speaker: But like junk is like, you are literally like just picking it up and loading in a truck.
Speaker: And if it breaks along the way, they don't really care because they were ready to get rid of it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So like, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: You're trying to, you're trying to assess your risk as much as like your reward.
Speaker: So that's, that's what I would say is like, that's, that's what I look at.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So what's the dream at this point?
Speaker: Like, are you pretty much where you want to be?
Speaker: Or what's the next kind of peak that you want to summit as far as this business?
Speaker: As far as this business?
Speaker: Or just you professionally?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: What I'd really love to do is travel in an RV with my family around the country and just, like, enjoy life.
Speaker: That would be...
Speaker: That would be, man, we got an RV this year and same kind of thing.
Speaker: Someone was like, it was sitting, it was a junk client.
Speaker: So we got an RV, we tried it out, we drove to Texas and back.
Speaker: What I did not expect was getting five miles to the gallon.
Speaker: So I was a little, I was a little, not the,
Speaker: the prettiness rubbed off a little bit of that, of that.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: I, I think at this point I'm, I'm definitely at a crossroads on where I want to go.
Speaker: I know that I need to build this up a little bit more to like have it fully function by itself.
Speaker: I'm close.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I have enough to like keep everyone employed that I currently have employed and like,
Speaker: this next year will be like a big year.
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.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, well, that's, did you not get people who were like, cause I know, I know, uh, home improvement, uh,
Speaker: really went up during COVID because people were like stuck at home.
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?
Speaker: Yeah, but then they were like, I can just do it myself because I'm not doing anything else.
Speaker: Ah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker: So then at the dump, there was like a two mile long wait of cars.
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.
Speaker: It'd be something like six feet out the back of the trunk and they were just like,
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
Speaker: I haven't been as good at that for a long time.
Speaker: I've gotten better and my website's gotten way better, but I, for a long time I didn't have online booking.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: But I like the crazy thing about junk is that people throw away perfectly good stuff.
Speaker: Like the shoes I'm like, I,
Speaker: The shoes I'm currently wearing are these like brand new Nike or Adidas shoes that we got two days ago.
Speaker: And like someone threw them away and I was like, they're brand new.
Speaker: They like it.
Speaker: Like, I'll just wear them.
Speaker: But you get stuff like all the time.
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.
Speaker: So she just had us take away the dryer.
Speaker: And it's perfectly fine.
Speaker: Like, I, like, donated it to a family who needed one, and we helped them install it.
Speaker: So, no, like, the thing I'd really like to do is I'd really like to do my art.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I still have in my mission box.
Speaker: I have some official Ray Wickham graffiti.
Speaker: No way.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: With the West Memphis Bridge and the sunset.
Speaker: I remember that.
Speaker: You remember?
Speaker: I remember that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The longest bridge in the world.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The longest bridge in the world.
Speaker: That's right, brother.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Good job.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Well, hey, man, it's been great talking to you.
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?
Speaker: Yeah, so I, when I got into dumpsters, I got, I didn't know how to weld.
Speaker: So I couldn't afford to pay a welder to fix a lot of stuff.
Speaker: So I taught myself through YouTube videos how to weld.
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?
Speaker: Because like I was really big into graffiti.
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.
Speaker: things that cross the boundaries of language, right?
Speaker: So that is like some sort of imagery not associated with words.
Speaker: So then for a long time, I've wanted to do like metal sculptures.
Speaker: I've seen some pretty cool artists take stuff and make like animals out of scrap metal.
Speaker: And like, sometimes you see stuff where people are like, they don't like cut it or like reshape it.
Speaker: They just like plaster it onto another piece of metal and just weld it.
Speaker: And it looks like crap in my opinion.
Speaker: And so I wanted to like take my like detail oriented self.
Speaker: And so I started taking stuff like, um,
Speaker: The first one I did was a red-tailed hawk, which is like really common here in the West.
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.
Speaker: And just, yeah, basically I'm just taking stuff and like,
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.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And I made a blue heron crane with that.
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.
Speaker: So then I...
Speaker: I made it.
Speaker: You're on, it's built from junk on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker: So go check him out.
Speaker: He's actually, he's gone viral a couple of times on TikTok.
Speaker: And then if you're in the Colorado Springs area, junkremovenow.com, that's the business.
Speaker: And if you want to know more about what we do here at Exit, you can check us out at exitgroup.us.
Speaker: You can follow us on Twitter at exit underscore org.
Speaker: Or check out the podcast at exitgroup.podme.com.
Speaker: Ray, it was great talking to you, man.
Speaker: Thanks so much for coming.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: Thanks for having me on.
