← Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
#187 Junk Removal as a Scalable Business?
00:44:44
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- [00:00]
Walter Hindman
Driving around my beat up pickup truck, I'm hauling people's trash in my hometown. I'm trying to get some of these donations to some people that need it. Like we got press pretty fast. That really blew us up in the.
- [00:10]
John
First like three months, two plus hours in flight time. What were you thinking?
- [00:16]
Walter Hindman
If I were to do it over again, I don't think I would do it.
- [00:22]
Mallory Irvin
One of the things that's helped our business grow the most has been peer groups. And that's been for both myself and our leaders. Being able to talk to other companies about exactly how they've solved. The problems that I'm dealing with today has just been instrumental. Whether it's how to acquire companies or how to add new locations, how to hire directors or service managers, or what should compensation look like. All of those things are things that can be solved by just asking people. A little bit ahead of you. Inside that group we have Fireside Chats, weekly peer conversations by business size, resources to help you grow your business, and a lot more. Make sure you check out Owned and Operated.com and click on Join Pro.
- [00:59]
John
Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Today we have a awesome special episode for you guys. John is out and in his place we have the one, the only, Walter Hindman. How are you doing, Walter?
- [01:12]
Walter Hindman
Good. I love the intro.
- [01:13]
John
Like I said, if you listen to the show, you know I've missed my calling. So Walter runs Junk Drop, which is A. There's three locations across the U.S. two in Texas and one here locally in Nashville. Walter and I have met up before to chat business. Let's start off with why junk?
- [01:34]
Walter Hindman
Yeah, that's a good question. So I graduated college in 2020.
- [01:37]
John
Great timing.
- [01:38]
Walter Hindman
I know, terrible timing. So I graduated in 2020. I basically got my diploma emailed to me as a PDF and I had a job lined up in New York. And at the time New York City was like the epicenter of COVID and I got my job offer recent and I had to figure out what I was going to do. So I moved back home with my parents and had to do basically the most humbling thing I've ever had to do, which is drive around your hometown in a pickup truck and offer to pick up your friends and friends family's trash.
- [02:09]
John
So. But why? Why that? Right? Because I mean, there's a lot of people that went through the exact same thing you went through and instead of going the trash route, they went window washing or they went pressure washing. You know, there's a lot of different. Or they drove for Uber or Lyft. Like, there's a lot of different paths you could have taken. Why did you land on junk?
- [02:32]
Walter Hindman
Yeah, it's middle ticket. It's not low ticket, like maybe cleaning or window washing or landscaping. It's a little bit higher up. But the startup capital is really limited. So all you need basically is a pickup truck to get started, and you can end up getting jobs that do become higher tickets. So you can get jobs that are 1, 2, 3. You know, we've done now in Nashville and we're four years in. We've done jobs that are $20,000. And so you can get bigger jobs, but also the startup capital is pretty limited. And so I knew that I did want to have some niche that I could differentiate myself with. And so in high school, I volunteered at a organization. It's called Oasis center. It's a 501C3. It's a charity. And they had an organization that, it's called Rapid Rehousing, where they found people that were formerly homeless, but they moved them into a new place and they, they helped get them situated. And I just had the idea of if I remove people's stuff, a lot of the stuff I'm going to get is going to be reusable. So I reached out to them and I was like, hey, if we get any good reusable stuff, do any of your recipients want it? I'll store it, I'll deliver it, I'll set it up. And so we started doing that. We started posting it on social media, we started posting it on next door and showing our clients directly where their stuff went and tried to be as transparent as we possibly could. And, you know, people sort of rally behind that. And that's kind of how we grew from the beginning.
- [03:54]
John
Okay, so. So in the beginning, the model was the stuff that we are pulling from junk, because most of junk, I mean, when I think of junk, a lot of times, I mean, my mind instantaneously goes to trash. Like you're picking up and doing those. Those kind of remodels that you see on houses where it's just destroyed. That's not what you're talking about. You're talking about something else.
- [04:16]
Walter Hindman
Yeah, it's a mixed bag. I mean, there's a lot of different demographics that we get that want a lot of different stuff gone. I mean, it's pretty crazy, especially in this age of Amazon, where you can get anything delivered to your home the next day, whether it's a sofa, a mattress, a box spring. You know, junk removal kind of used to Be people just downsizing or moving or cleaning other attic. But especially during COVID when it became. Everyone became sort of more materialistic. People got the stimulus tracks. People are getting sofas delivered, they're working from home, they're looking around their place and they're seeing stuff that they might want. New stuff, new desk, new dresser, whatever it was. And a lot of times people just buy stuff online and then they have to get rid of the old stuff or they'll redo a room and they want the old stuff gone. So in that situation, a lot of those items are good, reusable. Dresser, nightstand, tv, bed, items like that.
- [05:06]
John
Awesome. And so they pay you to pick it up and then you go and you deliver it to. To a family in need. And Awesome. I mean, that's a really cool model in terms of having the ability to give back. But also, I mean, you're different, right? That's a differentiation than the rest of the junk companies that are just going to throw it in the landfill somewhere. Okay, so first year, you know, you launched in 2020. Let's dig into some numbers a little bit, right? So you, you started this in, in 2020. What was your first year? What did that look like in terms of just top line?
- [05:37]
Walter Hindman
Yeah, top line. So a lot of times when I listen to podcasts like this, I listen to people and like, they say numbers, and I'm like, those numbers are crazy. So you might be. You might hear these numbers and be like, yeah, that sounds pretty small. Which is true. We got lucky the very beginning in that we got press pretty fast due to the fact that we got in the Tennessean, we got in the national scene, things like that. That really blew us up in the first, like three months. And that's due to the fact that we had the donation logistic niche. So we differentiated ourselves in a philanthropic niche that people gravitated towards, which got us a ton of pr. So I think we would have probably made, if we just did it, boots on the ground, guerrilla marketing, maybe a little Google Ad spend, we probably would have made 150. But I think the first year we did, like, I think it was 375.
- [06:24]
John
Okay, first year, I mean, that's amazing, right? I know you said little, but realistically, if you were to look at any kind of anybody starting up any business in plumbing and H vac, I mean, that's generally where people who are successful now, that's kind of how their first year went. It was a right around that, that 4 to $500,000 mark and there's enough. When it's just you and your buddy in the beginning, right? There's enough net in there to really start to. To get the ball rolling. So. So the first year is working out. I mean, I assume it's working out because you're using your own truck, you. You're paying yourself probably a base salary, and then most of it's going back into the business. Or did you just ball out?
- [07:05]
Walter Hindman
Yeah, we paid. We had a role where we paid each other $300 a week for like, the first, like, year. But then we would go on random trips and then spend like two grand and be like, we'll never do that again, and then come back to the middle at some point. But we were really, like, when we were in Nashville, we were super disciplined. And that's one of the nice things about having a co founder is you guys can really hold each other accountable in finances, where you can say, hey, I'm only spending this much, so you should also really spend this much. And especially at the very beginning when money is super tight, especially if you bootstrap, you don't take out any loans, any SBA loans, you've got no backers. It's just you guys and pick up in F150s, you know, driving around your hometown, you know, then you can really, like, reinvest back into the business, start getting box trucks, start getting better wraps, start doing better marketing, start hiring people that, you know, clients are going to love and then. And then actually scale. And that's what we did for the first. I mean, for. For a while, honestly, too cool.
- [08:03]
John
And so now we're at that spot. You reinvested all. What does year two look like?
- [08:09]
Walter Hindman
The first, like one to two years, we had like, this huge wave of press because what we would do is we would. We had. The first article come out is in the Tennessean, and they basically told our story of, hey, these are local guys who drive around the pickup truck. They're going to remove your stuff for next to nothing. And they. Unfortunately, they put our pricing in there because at the time, the pricing was way too low. I mean, it was brutally low. We're like $80, the pickup truck or something. And then we're like, I wish they didn't print that, because now we have to charge $80 to pick up for the next year and a half. But. But basically we use that as leverage and then post it on social media, all the donations we started doing. And then what we do is we would reach back out to all of the Other news outlets like News Channel 5, News Channel 2, the national scene, and we'd say, hey, look at this article that we did. We'd love to come in, in person, in suit and tie and kind of pitch what we're doing. You know, we're young, we're trying our hardest, we're hauling trash, we're humble dudes and we're donating stuff, right? And it's a story that a lot of people were looking for. And once we had that leverage that we were able to articulate our story pretty well, we went on LinkedIn. We found every single person that worked at all those news outlets and then we hammered them and that really took it off. And so, and so what we did was sort of unique in that like we use the press to have fuel to the fire. Because I remember the first two years we thought that market spending money on marketing was throwing money away. We thought it was like literally just giving Google money. It doesn't make any sense. And obviously that press didn't last forever, right? You have a huge spike of the news and you see, you check your Google Analytics and you're getting way more hits on your website. But that doesn't last forever. People forget. And then eventually we like had to start spending money on marketing. And he's like, we shouldn't have to do this. I know. That's how, that's how it usually is supposed to be.
- [09:53]
John
That's how most businesses work, right? Is, is you have to start at some point. Was do you view that as an advantage or disadvantage? Because I mean, in some sense, right? Some businesses, I guess in the sense, right. If you were a startup plumber or startup pest control guy, like you probably started with friends and family, but you at really early on you had to understand the marketing switches and the keys otherwise you wouldn't grow to whatever your Year two is. You wouldn't get to that one million dollar mark.
- [10:24]
Walter Hindman
Right? I think a lot of that was luck. But then also what turned out, you know, we were doing this press stuff just to get the press. And then hindsight's 2020 looking back, we got a lot of backlinks that we didn't even realize.
- [10:37]
John
I didn't even think of that from an SEO perspective. That's amazing.
- [10:41]
Walter Hindman
And so to have those backlinks early on put us at like number three in Google on like a year in and we're like, we're getting all this traffic to our website. Like I don't understand how this is difficult for other. We just got really lucky is the bottom line the very beginning with the press and having that donation logistic niche. But I don't think you necessarily, if you're a young entrepreneur, I don't think, or even older entrepreneur, I think you don't even necessarily need that donation philanthropic thing. I think there's a lot of people that like want to hear your story. I mean, if you watch the news they're running, every single news outlet is running 10 stories a night on 10 different things. They have to run those stories constantly. And they're looking for one or two feel good stories about someone that has a landscaping company and they cut the grass of the elderly lady next door where they've got a hv, you know, they've got H Vac company and they provide, they provided piping to a charity for free, little things like that. And they have to run these stories. So I think we did get lucky in the philanthropic niche. That is like baked into the business. But I do think that like these people have to run stories.
- [11:49]
John
Yeah, it's a 247 news cycle, so they have to fill it with something. And so from a grassroots guerrilla PR perspective, doing, if you're doing good things anyway, which most of us business owners naturally do, we have somebody who's in a hard time. Even though we're running business, we don't let them suffer. Like, why not reach out to them and say, hey, this is what we're doing. We'd love a segment. And what, what did that pitch look like other than like, hey, another story is running this. Like how if you were to blind pitch something like that, how would you reach out and say, hey, you know, we're just doing this cool thing or do, going for the, the sale and, and close there. It's.
- [12:30]
Walter Hindman
That's a good question. I 100% led with as much humility as I possibly could. I would say, hey, I'm 22 years old, I'm driving around my beat up pickup truck, I'm holding people's trash in my hometown. I'm trying to get some of these donations to some people that need it. Like, what advice would you give me? Basically? And that works so well because people genuinely want to help. But I think the problem now, especially with social media and people posting and trying to say that they're at a certain status, whatever, like everyone's trying to posture to be like, I'm in this position, I'm this business owner or whatever, but people don't really want to run a story on that. If you say, hey, like I took A huge risk. You know, my. My wife is here with me. We're working really hard at this company. We're showing up to our client's home. We're shaking their hand. My wife is, like, baking them cookies. Yeah, right. And leading with humility. Like, they really love the humility aspect. It's not even the philanthropic aspect as much as, like, I'm young, I'm in my 20s, I'm picking up trash in my hometown. Right. And I think people really eat that up.
- [13:32]
John
And so at some point, you get a. An idea that, hey, we're doing okay at one location. Let's do more. And not only let's do more locations, let's do more locations. Multiple states away, two plus hours in flight time. What were you thinking? And how's it going? I don't know.
- [14:00]
Walter Hindman
It's going pretty well. It's going pretty well. I. I think if I were to do it over again, I don't think I would do it. Yeah, I don't think I would do it. I think it's just too much of a headache. And I know there's people to listen to this podcast. Like, my fiance and I, we would drive around all the time and, like, want to put in the Lumineers or Zach Brian. I'd be like, throw on the O and O. I need some. I want. I want to listen to own and operated. And so I would listen to a lot of these stories, and I would try to, like, I would try to think, like, if I'm ever on this, like, what is something tangible that I would want to hear, you know, as a business owner, not just like, oh, you know, we're making this much money, and, like, you know, maybe just numbers, but, like, what's something tangible that I'd want to hear? And I wish I would have listen to myself say this maybe a few years back and stick locally. You know, we're in a space where we're not actually doing that bad anymore. But the beginning was brutal, man. I mean, the number of flights I had to take down to Austin, like, the number of people down there that you get a manager and you're like, okay, this guy's great. And then it turns out the guy's stealing from you, or a truck breaks down and you're two states away, or a client is upset because you didn't get all their stuff, and the employees are saying you did. I mean, there's. There's really infinite things that can actually. That can actually go wrong. And I would actually rather start another home service business in my hometown and maybe use the same lot. You can use economies of scale, use the same virtual assistant locally. Maybe you can use a truck for multiple use cases. I don't know. I think that genuinely makes more senses. Makes more sense. At least in the junk removal space. There might be some that work tangentially that are better remotely. Like, I know cleaning people say that you can do that remotely pretty well, but junk removal isn't one of them.
- [15:48]
John
Yeah, I mean I definitely agree with you on this one. How, how big were you? Like, what was your, like how many people or however you want to use metrics on it? How big were you when you decided to go? And was it a startup or did you buy a company down there?
- [16:04]
Walter Hindman
It was a startup. So four. We just had four guys full time in Nashville and then people doing back in social media, answering the phones and things like that. But four guys on the trucks, two teams. And I was like, we'll just throw up another team, just two guys, super limited expenses. I'll just buy these trucks, man. It's just like constant headaches of things going on and we are in a lot better spot now.
- [16:26]
John
Yeah, but well, you have to be right, you have to get into a lot better spot or like you wouldn't own it there anymore after a certain amount of time. So like I'm glad, I'm glad it's finally overcame that, that thing or that, that difficulty.
- [16:41]
Walter Hindman
Right. Also, one of the things we did in Houston that actually worked really, really well was we started with demand first and that's really hard to do. So we, we got a Google my business profile and switched it over to our branding, our website, our phone number, and we immediately started getting leads. And so we found a Google my business page that had like 450 reviews. It ranks super well. But we clicked on the frequency at which they got those reviews and the last review they got was like a year ago. And so I go on LinkedIn, can't find the guy, go on Facebook, find like a friend of a friend. I found the dude that used to be a co owner's Instagram and I messaged him and I was like, hey, it looks like you're out of the business. And he was like, yeah, I am. And I was like, I understand you let all of your employees go. You got out of your commercial lease, you maybe sold your website, but there's still an asset there in the Google my business page that's getting leads. And there's a lot of people that just sit on these Google My Business pages. Maybe not in H Vac or high ticket businesses as much, but I guarantee you locally, wherever someone is listening to this, there's a landscaping company, there might be a smaller pest control company, there might be a junk removal company, maybe a moving company, maybe a pressure washing company that ranks really well. It's got 185 reviews. It shows up to the top of the main keyword, which is junk removal, Nashville, pressure washing, Charlotte, whatever the main keyword is, it shows up pretty high. And their last review was a year ago. And if you can find the owner of that and somehow get that Google My Business page, this might be a slightly, slightly unethical tip. You know, I don't, I don't know the legality behind it. It's worked for us. But, but you can do it. I mean because technically you're acquiring that business, right? If you get a contract that says we're acquiring this business, one of your assets is the Google My business page and the phone number in the website. You route from that number to your number, you route the URL to your URL and you change the GMB page and you're immediately getting leads. Day one.
- [18:37]
John
That's definitely not unethical. I mean that's the same. This game has been played in a different fashion. When I talk to the old timers who run businesses in the home service space, they've been doing this for where they will, right? Specifically with the, the in H Vac with the, the sticker on the unit. If they go to and see an old junkie beat up sticker with a name they'd never heard before, they would used to pay their text to bring them those numbers and then they'd call them and they'd call them. If they couldn't get a hold of them then they'd go and they actually buy the phone number from the phone company. So that, that, now that on the other hand may maybe a little bit on the more unethical side but like the game at least has been played and now the fact that you're actually paying the old owner for the asset, like I think that's still a win on both sides because he was just going to shut down like the, the guy in Houston was just never going to do anything with it and instead it continues to get to good use and you have a great asset now and he has a little bit of money in his, in his pocket. So that's a good strategy. And, and I think that's something that's, that's Overlooked specifically the review function. That's really interesting that you found that. Like, hey, I'm going to look at when the last review was and then I'm going to go from there because I think a lot of times people just start on either databases from the city or licensures or, you know, back end, but you're actually going in and cold calling or cold finding people based on review frequency.
- [20:04]
Walter Hindman
Right. I think you phrased that really well. I just spend a lot of time on Google reviews.
- [20:10]
John
You're a small home service business owner. You spend way too much time thinking about Google overlords. That's what it is.
- [20:17]
Walter Hindman
Yeah, totally. 100%.
- [20:19]
Mallory Irvin
So the latest thing that we've been working on is maximizing our LSAs, which is local service ads, and also optimizing our Google my business profiles. So what that means is we're making sure that all of our LSAs are on when we need them and they're maximized to give us the best ROI. And then for GMBs, it's been partnering with service scalers to drive way more traffic through our GMBs. GMBs are almost like the new SEO. The more you put onto them, the better the performance. So our GMBs have been consistently getting better week after week after week. And it is our currently our single most impactful organic lead channel. So we'll sell hundreds of thousands of dollars a week through our GMBs. And I think last week we got 900 phone calls. So really impactful, awesome investment. And we've been able to partner with service scalers on both of those things. If you want to hear a little bit more about service scalers, check out servicescalers.com I think, I don't know if.
- [21:17]
Walter Hindman
It was your podcast or another podcast, but someone was talking about it was a H. VAC company owner in Vegas that grew to like $80 million a year by buying phone numbers every time a company and this is back in the day and Google's the new. Exactly what you just said. Google is the 21st century version of this. But he would basically buy the yellow page phone number every time the H Vac company went out of business and route it to his phone number. And eventually he looked up after 30 years and he's got 80 numbers that a bunch of old ladies put on their, on their refrigerator for decades and they forgot about and they wrote down and they said, these guys are great. Call this number. And I think the Google my business Pages is the 21st century version of that phone number.
- [22:00]
John
Yeah, I think it even, it even Means more in for you in, in kind of this, this industry. I, I bet that a decent portion of the people that you work for are reoccurring, but at the same time that there's no set length of guaranteed reoccur. I mean, there's not an H Vac either, but we try to put people on maintenance contracts for biannual service and things like that. So we stay at the top of the mind every kind of twice a year. Whereas with junk removal, I would imagine, like you call someone once and then you probably don't call that phone number for another two to three years.
- [22:37]
Walter Hindman
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of people that try to estimate like what the LTV is for, like junk removal and moving and that's. It's impossible to do. Like, there's sometimes you just need to not look at data. I think that's one of the situations. It's because it's like, it's so case by case. I mean, you'll have one client that like, yeah, they're staying in the same home. They use you every six months. Okay, well then you know exactly what the LTV is, right? They use you every six months when they clean out the garage. But there's so many random cases of people moving into town, moving out of town. Their mom died, their uncle died, they got to clean out the whole place. And those jobs are like four times the ticket of just a sofa removal. So it's like, I think it's really hard in junk removal specifically to figure out LTV for something that can usually the ticket variations, there's so much delta, like they vary so much and the jobs are so random. I think it's really hard to like have a PPP strategy and be like, okay, well our LTV is this. It's like you don't really know that. You know what I mean? At least in the junk removal vertical.
- [23:35]
John
But that makes sense. I mean, that makes sense why you would go after GMBs. And I feel like, I mean, once again, this, this could be incorrect. How often are you seeing other businesses, like junk removal businesses, how often are they going out of business versus selling? It's, it's not, I guess, in the terms of home service, the home service bubble. Right. We are already unsexy as it is. But the junk removal is one of those kind of tier two, tier three, kind of that people, I don't think initially think of when they think of home services. So are you seeing that there's a lot of older owners that are getting out or what, what's kind of the, the age range of, of the current market ownership as well as are they exiting or are most of the new owners newer owners?
- [24:26]
Walter Hindman
Right. Well, I think it comes down to barrier of entry and ticket size. So the barrier of entry for a cleaning company or a junk removal company or a pressure washing company is can you buy a pressure washing generator and a truck? And the same with junk removal as a truck, a cleaning company, can you buy cleaning supplies? And so there are companies that rack up hundreds of reviews, they've got a great Google my business presence that are some lady that has a cleaning company and she's been doing it for six years and then her son's going to college and she wants to just get out. She doesn't want to sell it, she just might want to get out. And the same with junk removal, junk in a truck, some you know, redneck and F150 just like me, you know, has been doing it for a few years and you know he racked up, I mean he's been doing it for five years. He's got substantial GMB presence, an organic URL profile that Google sees and they see that he's answering the phone all the time. He doesn't have like a, like. And so Google can see these things. They can see they're organic and a lot of times these people, they're not selling, they might just sell the trailer and like let their one other employee go or their two other employees ago or just get out of the commercial lease. The vast majority of business owners, at least as you said in those tier two, tier threes, they're not looking to get an exit. They don't know what the multiple they could get would be. And a lot of times life just happens and again the way and they don't take the Google my business page down and then you're looking at a page that's getting clicks, it's getting phone calls and it's going to nothing. And so that's why you can get a really, really good deal on that Google my business page because they don't even think they have an underlying asset there. They understand they can get four grand for their trailer. They understand, they understand they can sell their cleaning supplies for a couple hundred bucks and the pressure washing machine for a couple hundred bucks. But they don't understand that they can sell their Google my business page for X amount.
- [26:13]
John
So if you were to buy a Google business page with 100 reviews, 150 reviews, how are you valuating that for purchases? Because there is value. But like the way that we do it for tuck ins, like that's actually one of the assets we pull in tuck ins is we, we look for their Google business page. We want the phone number and then we want the book of business. But our valuation is based on customer acquisition cost across how many customers you have. Whereas if you're just buying the Google business page, it's kind of, it's kind of hard to. Yeah. Evaluate that. Where would.
- [26:46]
Walter Hindman
It depends how stale it is. If it's because Google has algorithm, if it's really stale, then you're basically just paying per review.
- [26:54]
John
Okay.
- [26:55]
Walter Hindman
You know what I mean? So if it's really stale, then Google understands that's not getting a lot of friction. So if it's over a year and it's gotten zero reviews, Google knows that. And Google's on the side of the client that's looking for that service. So they're going to rank that business super low on the gmb, but it still has an underlying asset because you could revamp that. You could start getting more reviews and then Google will start picking it back up again. And you're not starting zero reviews.
- [27:18]
John
Yeah. And so where do you, yeah, where, where do you put that? At the, like, how, how do you, how do you value it? Like, what are you paying for these?
- [27:25]
Walter Hindman
I paid a thousand bucks for the GMB with 500 reviews, which is a pretty good deal. Um, but it, it like, but he didn't realize he, he probably would have taken 500 or he didn't know there was money there. And so it's about like they don't have, they don't understand that there's value. So it depends if they understand that there's value behind it. And they're like, hey, this thing, it was inactive two months ago and it's getting you three calls. And I know my CAC is a hundred dollars per call, then they might be able to like create a multiple and like give you an actual valuation of like you're getting this many customers. I know how much they're worth. And then they'll give you a real number. But that's probably not at least in the tier two, tier three. That's probably not.
- [28:06]
John
That's interesting way to look at it because, and probably an accurate valuation because realistically, like you said, it's also a P. Like it's a passive source and there's something that you have to do to actually get it to function correctly. You have to revamp the entire profile. It's not, it's like, it's like a fix and flip almost on a. On a truck or on a house. Like, there's actually work that needs to go into it to get it back to par.
- [28:30]
Walter Hindman
Yeah, it needs a head gasket for sure. It's not alternator, it's a head gasket.
- [28:33]
John
So that was a long way to talk about your shop in Houston. So, but like, you started in Houston, you bought this one, and it's actually starting to, like, send leads and you're like, oh, I actually have to hire a team, I guess, or what. What was the next step?
- [28:49]
Walter Hindman
Well, we have a guy that we contract the jobs out there in Houston, and so we just do a 50, 50 split and we put them in the same CRM that we have in Austin. We have the same call center. So I'm paying. I mean, the guy that's already answering the phone, I just implemented him into that system and I split up a website and it's the same CRM as Austin, but it's just a different location. And it's pretty linear. It's not super complicated. But it's definitely not like printing money by any means. It does like maybe 1500, 2000 a week. So not much.
- [29:22]
John
I mean, money's money. Especially with all you're doing is lead gen for it. Lead gen. And then covering a salary to answer the phones, which is. Is it overseas?
- [29:30]
Walter Hindman
Oh, yeah, it's overseas.
- [29:31]
John
So, I mean, that's a huge win. I mean, I think anyway, if you could line up 10 of those, you would tomorrow. Because generally I think those would be a lot easier. You don't worry about the truck. You're not worrying about the owner doing X, Y or Z. It's just lead gen. Ryan, make sure.
- [29:44]
Walter Hindman
You have a really good chat. GPT contract.
- [29:48]
John
Sweet, man. So. So now you're on year what, five? Four, five.
- [29:52]
Walter Hindman
It'll be year five.
- [29:53]
John
So year five in August. What. What does the business look like now? Three locations. What's top line look like?
- [29:59]
Walter Hindman
Junk removal is a seasonal business. It's similar to landscaping, where in the spring and summer we do double the revenue that we do in winter. And in the winter we do about $1,500 to $2,000 a day. And then in the spring and summer, we double the workforce. We go from two guys to four guys, typically, and not every year. Some years we stay with four guys the whole year round. Some guys, two guys. But generally we double from the winter to the spring and summer to four guys in the spring and summer. We do between three to four grand a day. And we don't work on weekdays, so you can kind of do the math there.
- [30:35]
John
So like, what, what's changed in your business in terms of like, initiatives? So in the beginning you were worried about, hey, I needed to start marketing. And then in the middle you're like, oh, maybe I should start in a different location. But like, what are you focused on right now in terms of junk drop?
- [30:50]
Walter Hindman
We're really focusing on the donation aspect. We double clicked on that. We've had a partnership with Mallory Irvin. She's like a big influencer, mom influencer here in Nashville. She's got like a million followers. So we're doing hard social push with the donation logistic niche and that's worked really well for us. So we, we, we publish all the content that we make when we furnish the homes with our client stuff. And so the clients can kind of see the items that we removed in the home of someone that actually needs it. And so we made a big initiative with that in the past, like six months and kind of grown our following online. And yeah, I mean, the, the social following helps so much. We don't have a crazy big social following. It's like 4,500 or something. But it's, it's all like moms in Nashville. And so it's the exact demographic of people that we want. And we've done a good job of the jab, jab right hook of providing great content that they're constantly looking at of us furnishing homes for recipients and that philanthropic aspect to feel good and then also offering our value proposition at the end if you book, you know, $20 off or whatever the call to action ends up being. And that's worked really well for us because I, Yeah, because the Google game, man, is impossible. I think it's impossible because at least in junk removal, it depends vertical to vertical. But it basically is a game of supply demands. If there is enough supply of businesses that are bidding on the same 35 keywords, main keywords that most people search, junk removal, Nashville, Nashville haulers, Nashville junk pickup, whatever it is, if there are enough businesses bidding on those keywords, it will not be profitable for you to bid on those words, if that is the dynamic. And in Nashville, in Austin, that is the dynamic in junk removal, at least because we're low ticket. Right. Like an H vac, plumbing and electrical, you know, you might have.
- [32:40]
John
Yeah, there's more to the game, but I mean, for the most part, agree. We don't, we don't do PPC either because all the big players will bid up the words to, you know, six, seven, eight, a thousand dollars. And I've actually seen that with a lot of people who've talked to, through and owned and operated is that plumbing, H Vac, all the water heater keywords are all utilized and abused in terms of the, the price points because as a larger company that maybe has the three massive three verticals, plumbing, H Vac, electrical, like the lifetime value of that customer is over a hundred thousand. So like I can lose money on this vertical and then make money on my other two verticals just over the next 10 years. So not, not uncommon across. I think all verticals as the big players will overpay to grab market share. That being said, the game then becomes like, hey, how do I move my, my money into different verticals that will also produce ROI, right? TikTok, Facebook. And in your case, you, you went back to what you know and love it sounds like. And that is pr, like purely moving through a PR function. But I mean that honestly that's what worked for you in the beginning and it's still working for you now. So I, I love that idea. Very smart out of the box thinking to, to do partnerships and.
- [33:59]
Walter Hindman
Yeah, totally.
- [34:00]
John
What's interesting is like my, my, my theory on the entire home service industry is as we continue on into the next 10 years, Google loses ownership of the lead gen market. And what we see, I mean I think it was there's a gentleman Vas. I'm going to totally butcher his name. He used to own Next Gen down in Anaheim, but he was talking about the next 10 years is going to be about content. Like if you're at a party, what are you seeing someone do? They're swiping through their TikTok or they're on their phone here or they're on their phone there and it's all about marketing and digital content. And so the fact that you guys are already ahead like producing this content and have this amazing content machine where you're like, oh, part of our business is recording, installing this in people's houses in like the feel good aspect. I think that's amazing. Like, that's gonna kill.
- [34:53]
Walter Hindman
Thank you, man. Yeah, we have a, we have a requirement. The guys have to get three pieces of content every day. Two pictures of one video and then donations. They just have to get as much as they possibly can. And then they put in slack and you've got a content guy on the back end that gets it and then he chops it up he puts it through Canva, puts the logo on it.
- [35:12]
John
Problem that I have is like, how do I convince six plumbers to take pictures and videos for, for what they view as funsies, you know what I mean? Like, it's hard enough I've been pushing on them with 25 spiffs to get picture reviews. You know how many picture reviews we've gotten? Like two or three, like 25 bucks. Yeah, it's hard for a picture review, but they're like, I don't know what to take pictures of and not, you know, it's like a whole thing. It becomes a thing.
- [35:38]
Walter Hindman
Yeah.
- [35:39]
John
Even though it's the correct thing, it's still like a management thing to like have to push through as a change management. So I was actually thinking today, what we're going to probably end up doing is just hiring a videographer and then I'm going to take a week and then put, put them on a ride along with every single person in the company, including myself, so that we have pictures and videos of just day to.
- [36:00]
Walter Hindman
Day activity and the quality will be way better.
- [36:03]
John
Yeah. And I think that with, with 7 days, 12 days, 15 days of footage, I think that's enough B roll that could last me for a long time. Because that's what it comes down to is like, how do you get the B roll? How do you have the picture of the guy working on the sink at the time he's working on the sink?
- [36:18]
Walter Hindman
So we, and part of it is just the demographic of people that I have working for me. It's usually guys in their early 20s that are also on Instagram and they follow us and they get excited about it, you know, and so like we've got younger guys that are on Instagram and they see this stuff and the way that the guy edits it, it just looks fun and cool and the guys enjoy that. And so it's kind of full circle.
- [36:41]
John
And so, okay, so junk drop, what's the next step? Like what, what, what's your goals here in the next year? Three years? What are you trying to, to grow this to? Or is that even the goal?
- [36:51]
Walter Hindman
I mean, the goal with every entrepreneur that's running a business is to continually, every single day, take one step back. And if you're running a business perfectly, which is like almost impossible, but if you're running a business perfectly, you'll get into a position where you don't need to be involved at all in the business runs itself. And, and it's hard. It's hard. I mean, obviously way harder to do than actually say, but that is the goal with Jumpdrop is to get into a position where every single day we're taking one step out of the business. You do that with hiring someone to drive the truck and then someone to take the pictures and then someone to answer the phones and then someone to.
- [37:23]
John
Work to do the system that then the guy that takes the pictures takes the pictures from your team and then you don't have to be in the lo. Okay, so you are not necessarily 100% focused on junk drop. Your goal is still growth with the company. Like, you don't ever want to see it fail, which, I mean, I can understand because I do owned and operated now as well. But at the same time, in terms of your time management, you're saying, I'm going to do something else as well.
- [37:50]
Walter Hindman
We're starting a company called Local Linux. So what it does, it's based on keyword. So, for example, Junk Removal Nashville, it'll copy all the reviews that every single business gets for all time. So it'll say here are the top 20 businesses, here's how many reviews they've gotten in the past month. You can see the frequency at which these businesses are getting the reviews. You can see who's growing the fastest. And you can also see the seasonality of the business. So say there was 100 reviews left for that niche for Junk Removal Nashville. Last week you got five of them. Your competitor got eight, another competitor got 15. So you can see the total addressable market and the percent of that pie chart that you're taking up based on review totals, for example. And then you can also see inside those reviews what you're doing really well and what you're doing poorly. So we basically copy all those reviews. We essentially just dump them into ChatGPT. It's a little bit different. It's LLM. But we say create a SWOT analysis for what this business is doing really well. Their strengths, their weaknesses, their opportunities, and their threats versus the market. And so it'll say you're doing professionalism really, really great. Your timeliness is incredible, but your price communication could use some work.
- [39:01]
John
That's super interesting.
- [39:02]
Walter Hindman
Exactly. And it'll. Yeah. And it'll compare it to your competitors and they'll say in your market. Right. For H Vac Nashville, the market as a whole, the strengths are this, the weaknesses are this, opportunities are this, and the threats are this. And we'll say for H Vac, pricing is a big issue. People are concerned about pricing. They say it's not clarified really well, but they do say that the professionalism is great. A lot of these guys show up in rad vehicles with the polos and iPads, and they're doing an incredible job. Professionalism, and it'll give you an idea of real, tangible things that you can take into your business and implement to know what you're doing well and what you're doing poorly and what you can improve on. And so I really just created this for myself because I have a junk removal company and I'm super, super competitive and my best with other junk removal companies. Yeah, yeah. And I feel like every other business owner is the same way, where they're like, yeah, okay, other people are using other junk removal companies. I get that. That's maybe a marketing problem. That's a branding problem. That's a sales issue, I guess. How many people are doing that? Right? Do I take 15% of the market, 80% of the market, 20% of the market? And what are they doing? Well, that I can implement. And a lot of that data is baked into the reviews. And so we extrapolate them and we create like a really pretty UI that you can look at. You can see, you know, exactly how many you got compared to your competitors. Relative growth. You can see businesses that are creeping up. For example, we did H Vac and in Nashville, and you see, okay, cool. Only has 600 reviews, for example. They're not even a threat to Lee company or Hiller or maybe some of the really big guys. Right. But then you see the. The relative growth is incredibly high because they got all those reviews in the past six months because private equity came in and they bought every single billboard in the city. So you can see that. Like, and you wouldn't be able to tell that by just searching H Vac companies Nashville, because you would just see the total number of reviews. So it's just a cool way to visualize reviews and then get tangible data out of it in order to figure out what to implement in your business.
- [41:10]
John
Yeah, I mean, there's. There's an interesting use case there that, that I don't think we see very often is the ability to go in and look at feedback from customers, not only for your business, but on a macro level across an industry and a location where, you know, we. A lot of times we get these complaints of, hey, you know, your. Your pricing is okay here, but over on this, this zip code, it's too high, or something of the sort. And so that would be very interesting to be able to break down which, what percentage of which GMB is doing like, what, what's the feedback from each GMB comparatively? And I bet that that would be one of them. So super cool. And so is that what you're doing now?
- [41:55]
Walter Hindman
Like, yeah, I'm working on that mostly. Another cool thing that we've figured out is the seasonality. So as I said, junk removal is a seasonal business. The winter is half of what it is in the spring and summer. You can see, okay, are we just slow? Because every business owner has this question, are we just slow this month or is everyone else slow? That's something I would constantly ask myself when we ended up doing lots jobs than we thought. So what you can do is you can figure out, okay, there was a thousand reviews left this month for junk removal. Nashville, we only got 100. Everyone else got 900. But versus last year that number was 700 total reviews. So you can see the seasonality. You can see where it's busy. February, March, business Trends. Yeah, trends, 100%. And you compare that to the year before to understand, okay, everyone else is slow. I'm doing fine and I can kind of calm down.
- [42:44]
John
Super interesting. Well, awesome. You know, I love getting to dig into some of these different industries, Walter. I mean like, junk removal is one of those ones that is, you know, it's definitely unique in our home service field and it's really cool that we got to talk about it today. So we talked about, yeah, man, we talked about you making why you got into a junk removal in the first place. Talked about your growth story trajectory, why you wouldn't go multi state again if you had the chance. And if you did, you'd probably stick to utilizing as a lead gen source. And then we talked about marketing and a little bit about analytics, but it's called locallytics, so very cool. Yeah, I'm gonna have to check that out after this. If people want to find you or learn more about locallytics or just more about talk about junk, where can they find you at?
- [43:42]
Walter Hindman
Yeah, you can find me on Twitter. It's Walt Russell. 02. I only have 300 followers so I'll DM you if you add me. But you can go. If you want to try out the beta of locallytics you can go to beta Locallytics co and we're doing free for the first month for everybody. We want to just provide so much value that people want to keep coming back and eventually want to pay. But we're testing out the beta right now. So as I said, it's completely free. You can figure out the competitive landscape of where you are hyper locally. And, yeah, you can check that online.
- [44:12]
John
I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on today. And if you like what you heard today, make sure to leave us five stars. Wherever you listen to this wonderful podcast, head on over to Owned and Operated Dot com. Check out the workshops. Check out Owned and Operated Pro. We've got so much stuff going on, my head's spinning. They keep me busy around here. So I appreciate you all for listening, and thank you, Walter, once again. See you all later.