Ep. 536 - Ally Waste COO Harrison Crum - Profitable Growth in the “Trash to Treasure” Industry

Summary

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Episode Summary: Second in Command with Cameron Herold

Ep. 536 - Ally Waste COO Harrison Crum: Profitable Growth in the “Trash to Treasure” Industry

Date: December 16, 2025
Guests:

• Host: Cameron Herold
• Featured COO: Harrison Crum, Ally Waste Services

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Main Theme

This episode spotlights the meteoric rise of Ally Waste Services—a unique player in the waste management industry—through the strategic vision of COO Harrison Crum. Cameron and Harrison dive into how Ally carved a niche in multifamily waste services, scaled 20x in four years, and orchestrated over 15 acquisitions while maintaining a culture of leadership development and operational excellence. The conversation also touches on industry partnerships, technology, adapting to labor markets, and personal leadership philosophies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ally Waste’s Market Niche [03:01–07:09]

• Service Focus: Doorstep-to-dumpster (valet trash) and subscription-based junk pickup for multifamily properties (apartments, townhomes, HOAs).
• Market Gap: They handle “everything but the haul”—addressing what trash haulers avoid and what property managers don’t want maintenance staff to handle.
• Expansion Beyond Valet: Now also offer bin pulling, trash chute clearing, recycling sorting in highly regulated markets (e.g., San Francisco, LA).
• Profitability: Fixed-schedule pickups at thousands of communities nationwide yield a highly profitable and recurring revenue model.

“We basically do everything but the haul.”
— Harrison Crum [04:07]

• Segment Timestamps:
  • Niche description: [03:14–05:16]
  • Business model economics: [05:34–06:22]

2. Operational Scale & Reach [07:09–12:10]

• Now active in 40 US states (not yet in Canada).
• Primarily serving multifamily; some expansion into strip malls via services like "waste leveling."
• Sales organization structured with regional VPs, sales execs, and SDRs; heavily data-driven for targeting prospects. [08:10–09:05]

“We know who our customers are. So it’s just getting in front of them in all the different ways.”
— Harrison Crum [08:56]

• Employee count: ~1,500 nationwide, with 20x growth over four years
• Revenue estimates kept private; “over $100 million approach” implied, but not confirmed. [11:36–12:10]

3. Partnerships and Market Dynamics [13:25–15:56]

• Strong ties with national haulers (Waste Management, Republic); their services complement large haulers who occasionally sell Ally’s service as add-ons.
• Unique obstacles in “franchise” or regulated markets (e.g., New Jersey, NYC)—sometimes opt out due to regulatory red tape (anti-mafia laws, extensive background checks).

“It can get pretty convoluted in those markets. So we just choose to stay out of them.”
— Harrison Crum [15:54]

4. Scaling through Acquisition & Integration [16:51–25:19]

• 15 acquisitions in four years—main growth lever alongside organic sales.
• Rationale:
  • Acquire contracts and people (“acquihires”).
  • Enable national coverage for large property management clients (i.e., scale for RFPs).
• Funding: Backed by a board of directors/investors (“motivated” but specific funding undisclosed).
• Integration:
  • Depends on service similarity and culture.
  • Fastest integration: 1 week (when services/culture aligned).
  • Complex integration: Several months (new service lines, different structures).
  • Standardize tech/processes quickly; Ally uses custom-built software to avoid out-of-the-box limitations.

“A big part of what I do in the integration is standardizing to the Ally way of doing things.”
— Harrison Crum [21:34]

• Notable: Named one of 10 National Apartment Association "Best Places to Work" vendors.

5. Compensation, Labor, and Geographic Nuance [25:19–26:50]

• Pay is segmented by market: Wages tied to local labor rates and used to calculate customer pricing.
• Adjust prices higher in regions with higher cost of living.
• Keep compensation competitive to maintain retention and avoid staffing shortages.

“The market will dictate what you need to pay to get a good quality employee.”
— Harrison Crum [26:36]

6. Technology, AI, and the Future of Waste Services [26:50–30:27]

• Robotics: Humanoid robots for trash: “10-15 years out.” [27:02–28:26]
• AI Use Cases:
  • Image recognition (e.g., OCR for identifying dumped items).
  • Sensor integration: dumpster tip notification and rerouting.
  • Generative AI (Claude/ChatGPT) for analytics and managerial feedback.
• Innovation: Always seeking new tech but cautious and practical about adoption timelines.

7. Leadership & People Development [30:27–37:03]

• Delegation and team trust: Expanded team reduces minutiae for COO role.
• Leadership pipeline: Almost all operational leaders promoted from within (internal leadership program, not external hires below VP/C-level).
  • Annual “Leadership Development Program” (multi-week, exec-sponsored, curriculum-based).
  • Half of leader assessment is numbers; half is core values (e.g., humility).
  • Feedback-driven, with tough coaching and targeted skill development.

“Don't apply to this program if you're afraid to get your feelings hurt because we're going to call out the things that need improvement.”
— Harrison Crum [34:25]

• Books used: Dare to Lead (Brene Brown), How to Win Friends and Influence People, tailored picks for each program.

8. COO Reflection & Personal Growth [37:03–39:21]

• Perfectionism was a challenge; greatest growth area was learning to delegate and focus on strategic impact.
• Remains hands-on with final hiring decisions for regional managers.
• Advice to younger self: "Keep grinding. Dream big. Don't let outside noise diminish your dreams." [38:47–39:21]

“Sky’s the limit.”
— Harrison Crum [39:19]

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On unique value:
  “We’ve carved out a nice niche. ... We basically do everything but the haul.” — Harrison Crum [03:14–04:19]
• On differentiation from 1-800-GOT-JUNK:
  “We’re not really interested in like, you know, going in and cleaning up someone's garage because that’s kind of a one time job and they’re probably not going to need it again.” — Harrison Crum [09:18]
• On industry relationships:
  “We actually have a great relationship with Republic and Waste Management. ... They’ll actually sell our services and then bill a customer on our behalf.” — Harrison Crum [13:58]
• On scaling via acquisition:
  “Our CEO ... comes from doing M&A constantly and he’s really good at it. And so we’ve acquired over 15 businesses just in that timeframe.” — Harrison Crum [16:51]
• On internal development:
  “Outside of hiring our entry-level managers, we will not hire from the outside. ... Everybody below me has grown in the organization.” — Harrison Crum [31:20]

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Memorable Moments

• The “Trash to Treasure” theme: Harrison’s brother browses abandoned storage units as a hobby and resells finds on eBay—a fun sidelight on turning junk into opportunity. [10:15]
• Valuing Culture as Much as Performance:
  “Half… is their scorecard performance … but that’s only half. The other half is our core values.” — Harrison Crum [33:07]
• Leadership Book Exchange:
  Cameron and Harrison trade tips on essential leadership books, reinforcing a shared belief in lifelong learning and intentional skill-building. [36:11]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Ally Waste’s Market Niche & Services: [03:01–07:09]
• Organization Scale & Sales Approach: [07:09–12:10]
• Industry Partnerships & Market Challenges: [13:25–15:56]
• Acquisition & Integration Process: [16:51–25:19]
• Employee Compensation & Market Adaptation: [25:19–26:50]
• AI/Technology and The Future: [26:50–30:27]
• Leadership Pipeline & Culture: [30:27–37:03]
• Personal Growth Reflections: [37:03–39:21]

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Episode Tone

Energetic, candid, practical, and full of operational wisdom—with inspiring leadership philosophies and a collaborative, modest approach to success. Both speakers contribute humor (garbage industry jokes, leadership book banter) and genuine insight into the nuts and bolts of scaling a high-growth service business.

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Listeners walk away with a vivid sense of how modern “trash to treasure” companies are built, not just by picking up what others leave behind, but by finding repeatable value, scaling smart, and investing deeply in their people.

Transcript

[A]

Our sales organization is incredible, and it's not part of my team, but our Chief revenue officer, Taylor McBride, has built out a structure that's, it's quite intelligent. So he's got regional vice presidents in each kind of general area that they oversee. And then we've got what are called, you know, sales executives that will go out and they'll sell the individual kind of ones and twos. But we also have a sales development team, so SDRs that will make the cold calls, do the cold emails. I mean, our total addressable market is kind of. Until we can get more into the commercial space, it's really just multifamily. We know we pay for a subscription to an organization that gives us all the data. Right. Like we know who our customers are. So it's just getting in front of them in all the different ways.

[B]

Welcome to the Second in Command podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the chief. And now here's your host, Cameron Herold.

[C]

All right, our guest today is the COO alliance member and Ally Waste Services Chief Operating officer, Harrison Crummy. Harrison is an Arizona native with a great background spanning Fortune 500 companies and fast growing private businesses. He spent two years as a missionary in Peru where he became fluent in Spanish before earning his MBA from Babson College. Harrison began a career at Ford Motor Company and later transitioned into the SAS industry and then joined Republic Services which opened his door to a career in the Waste Services space. I joked with him before we started that our parents must have been proud that we were both garbage men because I came out of the 1-800-got-Junk era. He has drawn on his blended skills, both sales and operations, and he's got a successfully helped scale Ally over 20x in the last four years. Ally is now a national brand with services in 40 states. He's passionate about developing leaders and describes his ability to adapt quickly and bridge strategy with execution as his professional superpower. Outside of work, he's a great father of three. He's got one more on the way and enjoys competing in triathlons in fun new places. You'll love this episode. We'll see you on the inside and it's great having Harrison join us today. So, Harrison, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.

[A]

Thanks, Cameron. Excited to be here.

[C]

Yeah. I'm looking forward to this for a few reasons. One, you're a COO alliance member. And it's always great to have some of our members on the podcast. We've done about 520 episodes now. But it's great to highlight some of the members over the years. And then also, you're in the space that I came out of. Our mom and dads must have been pretty proud that we decided to become garbage men.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, 1-800-God. Junk is legendary. So it's a company we actually reference often. So it's excited to be talking. I'm excited to be talking with you.

[C]

Thank you. Well, tell us about Ally Waste. What is it that you guys do? Because the niche, I mean, the junk and garbage and waste is a massive, massive, massive industry. So where does Ally lie in this whole industry itself?

[A]

Yeah, we've carved out a nice niche. We got our start in the valet, trash space, or doorstep to dumpster, as people like to call it. It's primarily with multifamily communities. So we work with apartments, townhomes, HOAs, those types of things. But about two years ago, we started to dive into what might be a little bit more of a, um, competition. Did 1, 800, got junk doing junk removal, but we focus on a subscription service with multifamily. And then from there we've also done other acquisitions in what we call waste services. So waste services being all the things between the hauler and the property manager. So the things that the haulers don't want to get out of their truck to handle, and the things that the property managers don't want to pay their valuable maintenance people to handle. So things like pushing and pulling waste bins or clearing out trash chutes or sorting trash and recycling in heavily regulated markets like San Francisco or la. So. So we basically do everything but the haul.

[C]

Interesting. So you're. So you're. Because why. Underground junk was again, very, very different. Right. We would go into people's homes and basements and haul stuff away. Go into their, their offices and haul stuff away. You're not doing that. You're kind of. Before that happens. Is that right?

[A]

So, yeah, it's with multifamily, with the apartments themselves, the communities. Right. So inevitably, someone gets evicted or somebody, you know, leaves their community and they don't have space for their old mattress, so what do they do? They illegally dump it next to one of the dumpsters. Well, that's an eyesore and that's a problem that apartments need to take care of. So what we've figured out is if we can put these communities on a, on a fixed schedule and have densify these routes, then we can go out at a very affordable rate and we can pick up all the loose junk that they have that the haulers aren't going to touch. But that again are an ice floor for these properties. So we service thousands of communities across the country and offer this service.

[C]

Okay, so you've got like a waste management or a BFI Republic. The big garbage companies that come and haul that, they take the big bins that are sitting outside these apartment buildings or condos or whatever, they take all that stuff and then all the junk sitting on the ground beside it is what you guys take.

[A]

Exactly.

[C]

But these buildings or facilities are paying you just a recurring fee. And if you drive by and there's nothing there, you win. If you drive by and there's a whole bunch of stuff, you lose. But it just, it works out over time.

[A]

Totally. Yeah. It's a very, very profitable business for us and something that we're, you know, frankly we're the only player in the game doing it that way.

[C]

Um, it's got the infrastructure, it's super, super intriguing. So, okay, so how many times a week are you going past these buildings or do they pay for that as well? Is that some of them want you going every day because they're a high ticket place like a luxury condo tower where they're willing to pay for it because all their, their owners are driving Bentleys. And then you've got the low income places that want you to come once a week because their tenants put up with it. Is that kind of how it works?

[A]

So it's, it's funny enough it's the other way around. The luxury communities generally aren't producing any junk. These, these residents can pay a 1, 800 got junk to come in and take care of their, their stuff versus the section 8 housing, you know, is generally going to produce a lot more junk. And so what's great about our business model is that it works for every community. So if it's a high rise luxury community, the doorstep to dumpster works really well because they don't want to even have to take their trash out. So they just put their trash in a special bin outside their door. We come by as a concierge service. We grab it and we take it for them. For the low income communities that are producing a lot of junk and trash, they need us heavily on the junk removal side of things. So we've got something for every type of community out there. And yeah, the business is going really well.

[C]

Incredible. All right, how many states Are you operating in, are you in multiple countries yet?

[A]

We haven't tapped into Canada yet, but we're, we're in 40 states, so just, just United States.

[C]

Okay, so 40 states. And do you do commercial as well? Like, are you doing malls and office buildings as well, or do they have that same use case?

[A]

We do some of it and we'd love to get into more of that, so anyone listening, you know, give us a call. But what we've done is like strip malls where all the dumpsters are managed by the same property manager. The use case for, like at Chipotle, for example, isn't really there because they have one dumpster. There's not much we can do, and people aren't generally leaving junk there. Right. But let's say it's a strip Mall with 10 dumpsters and three of them are overflowing and two of them are empty. We can come by and kind of take the overflow and redistribute to the other dumpsters on site. That's one of the services we do. It's called waste leveling. And that, that's a great use case for like a, like a strip mall or commercial style.

[C]

Incredible. And is this just a kind of cold calling, direct sales model? Like, do you guys have guys out in the field or people out in the field that are just knocking on doors?

[A]

Our sales organization is incredible. And it's not part of my team, but our chief revenue officer, Taylor McBride, has built out a structure that's, it's quite intelligent. So he's got regional vice presidents in each kind of general area that they oversee. And then we've got what are called, you know, sales executives that will go out and they'll, they'll sell the individual kind of ones and twos. But we also have a sales development team, so SDRs that will make the cold calls, do the cold emails. I mean, our, our total addressable market is kind of. Until we can get more into the commercial space, it's really just multifamily. And we know, you know, we pay for a subscription to a, an organization that gives us all the data. Right. Like, we know who our customers are. So it's just getting in front of them in all the different ways.

[C]

Incredible. Okay, the other one I have is. And you don't do the services that the 1-800-God junk does. You don't go into people's homes and businesses and haul stuff away. You're. You're in, again, that, that really interesting niche.

[A]

Yeah, we're not really interested in like, you know, going in and cleaning up someone's garage because that's kind of a one time job and they're probably not going to need it again at least.

[C]

And we beat you, right?

[A]

And you guys beat us to it like so. So let's do something different now. With that said, we do something called trash outs at apartments. And this is, let's just say a community we already service. They, they have someone they need to evict and so they've left a bunch of junk and that needs to be trashed because they give them a certain amount of time before, you know, they just have to get rid of it. We'll go in and we'll clear that out and we do a bunch of that. I mean, we have teams that dedicate to just that service across the country. But, but yeah, storage facilities as well. Did you say storage facilities? Yeah, we haven't, but I mean that's certainly something we could look at. That's a good idea.

[C]

Those are pretty big too. I mean, the end of month when people aren't paying their bills, they like to get rid of all that stuff. And it's pretty easy. You just go in and clean up the entire storage locke and off you go.

[A]

Yeah, and that's funny. My brother, he actually loves as a hobby buying those storage units and he'll go in and ebay off a bunch of the items.

[C]

There's got to be a good market in that too, right? Yeah, there's, I mean, this is the question I'm always asked and you know, is there any weird stuff that you're picking up or is there any, anything valuable that you're picking up? I can't imagine that there's a whole lot of value in the stuff that's being left beside these dumpsters. That's really not your revenue model.

[A]

Yeah, not, not generally, but, but one thing that we're, we do in some markets in California, for example, is we'll take, we'll take mattresses, we'll pile them up in like a 53 foot trailer and then have a company that will come and recycle those mattresses. Same thing with appliances. You know, we'll, we'll recycle appliances. But beyond that, to your point, a lot of this stuff doesn't have any value. It's damaged or it's, you know, it's, it's at the end of its life and so it unfortunately goes to the landfill. But that's something, that's one of our initiatives moving forward is really improving our carbon footprint. And figuring out how we can reduce what's going up to the landfill.

[C]

Yeah, and sometimes you're not making money, you're just actually reducing your dump costs, reducing your landfill costs. So. And it's, and it's good, it's good kind of as a human to be able to do that kind of stuff. Can you speak to your revenue? Do you talk to you guys? I know you're privately held. Do you disclose your revenue numbers and number of employees? Just do we have a scope or.

[A]

I'll give you employee count, not revenue. But I will say it's, it's, it's grown tremendously. We've grown 20x since I started here four years ago. And we have about 1500 employees across the country.

[C]

Okay. So I can do a guesstimate on revenue. I won't do that for you, but.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, you're over 100 million approach. Yeah. Just because we're privately held at this point and I think it's. Some of our competitors probably could make a guess, but we'd like to keep it secret.

[C]

Now, the, the founder, when did they start the business and how did you get involved?

[A]

Yeah, so, so the founder of our business started the company 10 years ago. And as I mentioned before, it was, it was just a pure play valet trash company. Five years into that, our CEO joined the business from Harvard Business School and built out a board of directors and started to look to build out an actual team. And that's when I came in, about a year after that. So I was connected to the founder of the company from high school, of all places. We hadn't talked since high school. I was working at the time for Republic Services, which is one of the big waste haulers. And he liked my waste industry experience and then some of the other things I had done in my career up to that point. So it made sense. But again, we were a tiny company at the time and we've grown gangbusters since then.

[C]

So have you attended the luxurious waste Expo that they usually hold in Las Vegas?

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah, I've been two or three times. And it's, it's amazing. It's the type of thing that every small child or small, you know, toddler would love to go to because there's this massive shiny new garbage trucks and new technologies and things that. Yeah, it's a good time.

[C]

These trucks are crazy. I remember, I remember going to a guy, I'm going back 20 years ago now, but in Las Vegas there's probably 6,000 people at the thing and you know, it was Waste Management and Allied and BFI and Republic, all the big boys, Oakleaf and walking around going like these things are huge. And I was the smallest guy in the room. I'm six foot three and I mean, I think every guy in there was like six foot six. Do you have any issues with the big garbage companies at all? And do you have any issues with unions or you know, New Jersey, New York with like the anti mafia legislation?

[A]

So I'll take those one by one, starting with the haulers. We actually have a great relationship with Republic and Waste Management. To the point with Waste Management they'll actually sell our services and then build a customer on our behalf. Right. And, and so we've got a great partnership. And the reason why is because one, they don't, they don't necessarily do junk removal. And, and two, they like, let's say they get to a dumpster and it's completely overloaded. They can't tip that dumpster and customers will, you know, complain to them and want the problem solved. So they'll call us, we'll clean up around the dumpster and make it accessible so that they can then tip the bin. So we've got a great relationship and we're looking to expand that with you mentioned GFL and Waste Connections and some of those other haulers, but slowly but surely that's a space that we'll, we'll get more into. Now it can be a challenge when there's franchise markets and they don't want you doing anything. But we have to push back on what's the franchise agreement say when it comes to. You mentioned the Mafia and I know you're joking there but, but let me.

[C]

Clarify the question too. So when we were operating in, we were in about the same number of states, about 43 states. We had an issue with Thousand Oaks, California with the, the garbage company. I think it was Waste Management had the exclusive rights to basically haul garbage and they were upset at 1-800-got junk for operating there. I'm like, well we don't have an agreement with you. Like we don't like we're doing it, it's legal. But they were upset that we were infringing on their agreement with the city. So that got, got kind of weird. And then I remember when we were opening up in Manhattan in, in, in New Jersey, we had to fill up these huge reports for the state because they had some anti mafia legislation there. And I guess there was mafia involvement at some point, probably like 50 years ago in the garbage industry. So yeah, it was, it was a strange question that maybe the normal listener wouldn't be up to. But I'm curious how you guys navigated those.

[A]

Yeah, I mean there are certain markets you mentioned, New Jersey is one of them where we're just limited in what we can do. I mean we can do some of the more janitorial type services, but we can't do the junk hauling or the waste hauling, you know, because they're there. I mean they asked to the point for to do background checks on every board member, every executive and it's just, it's a non starter. There's no reason to have to, you know, disclose everyone's income and all these things they're asking for. So it can get pretty convoluted in those markets. So we just choose to stay out of them.

[C]

I like it makes a lot of sense. All right. In terms of the growth of your organization, I mean you said a 20x bro, since you've been there over the four year period, what, what is leading to that growth? And you know, some people might be like, oh that's so great, so easy. I mean growth isn't easy. That, that kind of rapid growth can be difficult. So can you speak to how you're navigating that growth and why you think it's happening?

[A]

Yeah, and growth is one thing, but growth profitably is another. Right. It's difficult to grow profitably. And I'll, I'll give all credit where credit's due to our CEO. He comes, he's a Wall street guy, right. He comes from doing M and A constantly and he's really good at it. And so We've acquired over 15 businesses just in that timeframe. Some really small, doing less than a million dollars in revenue, some doing many millions of dollars in revenue. So that's what has catapulted our growth. But our organic sales engine has been off the charts and they're doing extremely well. But they can't sell if our operations aren't up to par. Right. If we're not providing a great service, then their sales will flatline. We happen to have fantastic retention. So a winning formula is going to be your sales growth is higher than what you're losing. And so our annual retention is in the 90%. Like we don't lose customers often and when we do, it's usually because there's a property sale or bankruptcy or that sort of thing and they just can't afford the service anymore. But we've carved out a great niche and a need. So there's, you know, that product market fit. And I would say, just to kind of summarize my answer here, it comes down to the acquisitions we've done and the quality of service that we provide.

[C]

Foreign. Hey, it's Cameron Herold, your high energy leadership guru, here to pump you up on the Second Command podcast. If you get frustrated because your managers aren't leading like you want them to be, check out my game changing leadership [e-mail] that's investinyourleaders.com for just 3.47 per leader. You get 30 years. My proven experience straight from taking 1,800-got junk from 2 million to 106 million as CEO. And it's packed with 12 easy modules. Learn situational leadership coaching, delegation, conflict management and more all in under 6 hours. @investinyourleaders.com with straight to the point videos, worksheets and real life scenarios, your team will master time management, be able to hire a players and get aligned with your vision. It's all backed by a 30 day money back guarantee and raved about by hundreds of CEOs and thousands of managers already learning from the content. Grab this now and watch your business soar. That makes sense. Can you speak to some of the acquisitions? Did you see 40 acquisitions or 20 acquisitions?

[A]

15. 15.

[C]

Okay, that's a lot of acquisitions. What, why are you doing them? Is it to acquire the contracts that these companies have already landed? Is it kind of an Aqua hiring where you're acquiring their people or their assets? Or is it, is it just faster to be able to grow geographically that way?

[A]

Yeah, it's both things at Aqua Hire and, you know, bringing on the contracts, we're only going to do the deal if it makes sense to us, but it's, it's allowed us to become a national player. So when we first started, we were looking around and there were hundreds of mom and pops doing what we were doing and there were only one or two national providers. And what we realized is that the best way to grow our business profitably was going to be going after the big whales, right? The biggest gray star type accounts or these large property management groups that have thousands of units versus just a couple of properties. And so that was the logic behind growing quickly and acquiring so that we can be offered in 40 states. So that when a gray star comes to us and says, hey, we would love to run an rfp, can you service all of our locations? The answer is yes.

[C]

Okay, it makes sense. Talk about the acquisitions. How are you funding Them and then, I mean, you've got the acquisitions and then we have the integrations. So can you speak to how you're doing the acquisitions or is that giving away a little bit of your secret sauce? And then can you speak to the integrations once you've bought the companies? How do you merge the people in and the systems in? Can you talk us through some of that?

[A]

Yeah. So I don't think it's any secret how we do it. A lot of it is networking. You know, it is, at the end of the day, a small industry in multifamily. And just to put a little plug for ally waste, we were one of 10 companies selected this last year as NAA, which is the National Apartment Association. Best Employers Like Best Places to work. We were one of 10 vendors that were selected and there are hundreds if not thousands of vendors. So we carry a good reputation, but everybody knows each other in this industry. And so if you service multifamily, we probably already know who you are. And so the research there isn't too difficult. And then as far as you know, I probably don't want to get too specific as how we fund those deals, but we've got a motivated board of directors and investors that are interested in seeing this company grow and building value. So that's what I'll say about the acquisitions. And then as far as integrating, I mean, that's a big part of what I do. Right. Is bringing together all these different players and leaders. And sometimes we get all stars that come over and then they become a director or a VP of a certain department or territory. Other times, unfortunately, you strike out. You don't get great people, but you get great contracts. A big part of what I do in the integration is standardizing to the ally way of doing things. So following our processes, our safety standards, adapting our technology, we've homegrown our own software that helps us operate the business. And that's been a game changer because without it, we'd be forced to use something like Salesforce or out out of the box solutions that don't necessarily apply to what we do or we don't have the velocity or agility to, to, to make it do the things that we need it to do. So we've got a robust set of apps that our techs use, that residents at these communities use, that property managers use. That's all been helpful in integrating the businesses and making sure that, you know, hey, I know you really loved your mom and pop provider. The people are staying the same for the most Part the managers and the techs. But by the way, here are all the benefits. You're going to get new technology, you're going to get a better support system. And you know, we've got this built out and figured out and we've been successful along the way. So. Any other, I guess anything else I can answer along those lines?

[C]

No. It's interesting. So when you're, when you're doing these acquisitions and you're, you're kind of changing out some of the people putting some of those systems in place, how fast normally or how long normally does it take to, you know, buy a company and then merge everything in and have it running as if it was always a part of your business?

[A]

It totally depends on the services that they offer. And I'll give you two examples. We just closed on an acquisition, and this is public information, but we closed on an acquisition about a week ago and within one week they were integrated using our technology. Managers understand the assignment and, and everything seems to be flowing well from a quality of service standpoint. How we were able to do that in one week's time was they offer the exact same services that we offered. So their valet trash services. Both the cultural alignment was there in the types of people that they hired and the attitudes of the people, but also just the way that they offered the service was almost identical to the way we did things. So it was like a glove, it fit perfectly. And we'd been working on that acquisition for about a year and a half. Conversely, there's a company that we closed on about five or six months ago and they offer completely different services. So they were doing a lot in, like I mentioned earlier, highly regulated markets with recycling and a lot of other equipment, like what's called a scout truck, where you're picking up dumpsters and driving them out to the street so that the hauler can come collect them. None of that is anything that we'd ever done before they were even offering. I guess we all now offer Porter services, which is like a janitorial type service and not something we were familiar with. So all of that, the technology needs to be reconfigured. And, you know, management structures were different. So the businesses were just, I mean, well aligned, but the personnel and the technology and the processes were completely different. So that's taken quite some time. And I wouldn't say we're, well, we're fully integrated now, but it took a few months.

[C]

So, you know, you always hear people in companies saying, well, my area is different or my industry is different. And, you know, one of the differences for sure in your business is the weather. I mean, you know, hauling, doing stuff in Buffalo in the middle of February is just different from Arizona in the middle of July. How do you standardize things like pay? You know, where you have people doing the same job, but in markets that are completely different? Do you, do you reconcile the pay that they're getting based on cost of living in different markets? Or do you, do you get that granular?

[A]

We do. And a lot of it starts at the, at the, the sales process. Right. Like, we're going to charge more in California than we do in Dallas, Texas, and we're going to charge more in Buffalo, New York than we do in Tampa, Florida. Right. And so, yeah, it definitely depends on, on cost of labor. We look at that, we run an analysis. Every time we're quoting something and just saying in that area, what are we typically paying and how much higher is it in other areas? And then we can compare that to come up with a labor rate, to then extrapolate that and come up with the price. So it all starts with the price. And yes, we do pay our people more in markets where cost of living is higher. And look, the market will dictate what you need to pay to get a good quality employee. You know, if you're striking out and constantly having staffing issues in Austin, Texas, well, you probably aren't paying enough in competition in, compared to the competition. Right. You look at what is McDonald's paying in the area, and if they're at 25 bucks an hour, $18 an hour is not going to cut it.

[C]

I can't see that robots are going to be used in your space in the next five years. But are you guys having those discussions at all, or is that still too far out strategically to be spending any time thinking about?

[A]

You know, I, I think it's a great point and something that we should always be thinking about. I would love nothing more than for humanoid robots to be doing the trash collection job. The question is, can they climb stairs? Can they lift heavy, you know, trash bags? And, and can they do it efficiently? And if they can, I'm envisioning pulling up to a property with a, you know, trailer full of 10 robots, giving them each an assignment and saying, you do these buildings, you do these buildings and go, you know, now how far away from that we are, I have no clue. I look back to my time when I, right out of college, I went to work for Ford Motor Company and the talk at the time was autonomous driving. That you know, by five years from now, there won't be steering wheels and vehicles, and everything will be autonomous. And that's the direction we're going. And here we are, you know, 12, 13 years later, and, like, we kind of have done that, We've kind of achieved it. But I still think we're probably five to ten years away from, like, fully autonomous being an acceptable form of transportation for most people. And I know Waymo's out there doing its thing and, but, but still facing regulatory issues and all that, so not to get too deep into that, but I, I think that while humanoid robots are exciting, we're probably. And again, I don't have a crystal ball, but 10, 15 years away from them actually being able to do the things that, you know, would replace someone's jaw. And again, I, I would love to be proven wrong, but.

[C]

No, I agree. I think, I think it's a little bit further out. I do know that the pod vehicles are being tested in Las Vegas starting next month. Zoox is putting out vehicles on the road where the passengers will all be facing each other, and there's no steering wheels in the vehicle whatsoever. So those are now being tested. And then we have the autonomous helicopters being tested in Dubai starting in January and in Abu Dhabi. But, yeah, I think it's a little far out. So what about AI? Are you guys bringing AI into the business? And how are you, you know, adapting to some of those tools?

[A]

We are on, like, the, you know, analytics side of things. One, one area that I have my eyes on is image recognition, right? Ocr being able to upload photos and have the, you know, software determine what's in the dumpster, what's next to the dumpster, that could be very helpful in our business. So that's something we're. We're looking at. Another thing we're looking at or that we're, we're piloting right now is. And I don't want to give away too much to our competitors, but I'll, I'll say this. We've got sensors that we can put on dumpsters to tell us when they're tipped and tie that into our, our technology. And then, of course, AI can be helpful. But if, if we can reroute our teams according to when a dumpster is tipped, it's helpful. You know, oftentimes we'll pull a bin out to the street and we have to wait for the hauler to dump it before we can bring it back into the property's garage. And so getting more real time feedback would be helpful. As far as like the analytics, we've got a couple of analysts that will use like Claude or ChatGPT to help with our scorecards. Like they'll load their scorecards into Claude and say, you know, give me a good couple paragraphs explaining our wins and our areas of opportunities this week so that as they're shooting it out to the teams, they're not just looking at a chart of numbers. But here's how we progressed from last week or here's some areas of opportunity and specific people that need to step it up. So we're trying, but I'm always looking for new ways to integrate AI.

[C]

Makes sense. What about some of the roles of the coo? I mean in your day to day role as the chief Operating officer, the business you mentioned has got about 1500 employees system wide. What do you focus on day to day and how do you prevent yourself from getting sucked into the minutiae when you could be involved in every single business area or region or meeting is happening?

[A]

Yeah, that's probably the hardest part in my opinion about being a COO is, is just I, I probably could be involved in every little thing and I wouldn't have a life and I have small children and it's very important to me to be a good father and a good husband. So when we talk about AI, actually this is, this is credit to the COO alliance but the tool fixture was, was brought up and there were Quite a few CEOs already using that. So I just turned it on yesterday believe it or not and it's been amazing. It will basically read all my emails, tell me what I need to reply to and pre populate drafts. So that's been awesome in the last day or two. So I'll be looking at that because I get a high volume of emails and a lot of it is just FYI stuff that I could kind of have it read for me. But yeah, how do I keep myself from getting involved in all of the minutiae? As we've scaled the benefit of more revenue is, is, is more money to pay good leaders and, and you know, we've, we've put such an emphasis on promoting from within. Outside of hiring our, our, our entry level managers, we will not hire from the outside. It's a commitment we've made to the organization culturally, but also it's, it's produced great results. So of course we'll bring in an executive like a C level person or a VP level person from the outside for a different department if needed. But as far as on my team, everybody below me has grown in the organization. And so building those great leaders and spending a lot of time on people development is the best way that I have found to kind of keep myself out of all the minutiae, because I trust 100% that they can run with certain areas of the business, because I've seen them do it years over years.

[C]

Yeah, I want to ask you about that. I'd like to ask how you identify the emerging leaders. Like, who are the people in the organization that you're keeping an eye open for? And then, you know, with, with, obviously there's the. The obvious invest in your leaders training, which. Where you put people through the core skills. I was making lots of jokes about that at our recent CEO alliance event. How do you. How do you grow your people? What are the skills that you're trying to impart on some of these emerging leaders as you start promoting them? Because if they've never done it before, we have to grow them. And I agree with the, you know, the better the double, you know, than a double. You don't in doing that. But how do you grow them? How do you make sure that they can do it?

[A]

Yeah, and that's been one of the most challenging pieces of our business is after making that commitment, you know, holding true to that because there's always that temptation of here's the shiny new leader outside of the organization is willing to do that job. But identifying the leaders comes through. I take everyone's performance and I divide it right in half. And on one side of it, it's their scorecard performance, it's the actual numbers, it's how they're producing and. And you know what the numbers say that tells half the story. But that's only half. The other half is our core values. We have six core values that we're passionate about. We test vigorously for these in the interview process and then throughout their time here. So I've got plenty of team members that crush it on the scorecard. They're scoring a perfect hundred, but they've got one or two core values that they're lacking in, and they'll never be able to climb to that next level until they get that figured out. So how do we address that? We've built a leadership development program. And so about twice a year we take applicants from the whole company. And this is, you know, cross. Functionally cross division. But, you know, whether it's from ops or sales or accounting, people will apply to be in this program. It's a 10 to 12 week program. Every participant will select, you know, eight to 10 participants. And every participant gets an executive sponsor. So they get a mentor, whether it's me, our CEO, our cfo, et cetera. And we'll do weekly one on ones with them. There's a book that we read together. There's a kind of a kickoff meeting, a meeting at the end of the program, a service project at the end of the program. And we drill into them our core values, and we drill into them the areas that they're lacking. So if the example I gave you where someone's crushing it on their scorecard, but they have these one or two core values that they're, they're lacking in, we identify that from day one and we say, don't apply to this program if you're afraid to get your feelings hurt because we're going to call out the things that need improvement. And so, you know, let's just say humility is one of our core values. And if this is someone who traditionally has not received feedback, well, we're going to focus on that core value during the leadership development program with that person. So that's something I'm excited about. We, we've had great success. You know, most of our leaders in that program get promoted to the next level with time.

[C]

Yeah, I love the intentionality of that. What's the book that you read with them?

[A]

So it depends. We, we have changed it up. My personal favorite book of all time is how to Win Friends and Influence People. And then that's kind of just a crash course of my opinion on, on success and, and, and leadership. But one we're reading right now is called Dare to Lead by Brene Brown. And so talking a lot about vulnerability, talking a lot about, you know, the makeup of a good leader. So we're, we're, that's kind of our course curriculum right now. But we also, every other week we'll have a leader step up. For example, today I led a class on problem solving. You know, problem solving is probably the single most important skill that someone needs to have to be successful at least in our organization and, and to climb the ranks. And so we'll, we'll lead discussions on specific topics.

[C]

Love it. It's very similar to the programs that we used to go through at college Pro Painters, which is where I really learned how to scale companies that, the intentionality of that. Take a look at a book, if you haven't already, called Leadership and Self Deception. It's quite good. And then the other, you know, the, the, I think that probably the, the foundational book on leadership still after 40 years is the one minute manager. Right. It's just so solid by ken Blanchard and Dr. Paul Hersey. Kind of grounded in situational leadership. It's such a simple read, but there's so many strong lessons that people pull out of that. I love you doing it. So how about yourself in your role? I mean you've been with the organization for four years, 20x growth. It can't be the same job that you're doing that you were doing four years ago. It means your skills have had to change. Where do you think your skills have evolved over the last couple of years and what are you working on today that you're trying to get better at?

[A]

I, I'm a, I'm a perfectionist, always have been. And it, it's, I think a benefit to be an executive, but it's also to my detriment. One of the things that I've learned and that's, that's been hard to learn is the power of delegation. And when you're a perfectionist, yet you're delegating tasks, nothing is going to be perfect unfortunately. And, and coming to terms with that has been, has been challenging. But I've improved tremendously at delegating tasks and trying to focus on working on the business versus in the business. It's very easy for me to go down a rabbit hole of a specific property and a specific service that's happening. And then I look up from my computer and you know, 10% of my day is gone that I spent on one single customer when we have thousands that could be benefited, you know, with, with more strategic thinking. And so that's been an area that has evolved tremendously over the last four years. Whereas when I started with this company, it wasn't uncommon for me to get on an airplane and go out and visit with customers and hire staff on the ground level. Right. So I do all of our higher level hires and I do make it a point though. So we have, we have about 60 actually that's grown in the last few months. But we have about 70 district managers out in the field that manage on a very regional basis our business. And I still to this day make every single final hiring decision. We run them through a process, but nobody gets through the business without passing through me just because I think people and culture is such an important part of the business that we're building.

[C]

But yeah, let's go Back to the 21 year old Harrison and give yourself some advice. What advice would you give the younger you that you know to be true today.

[A]

Keep grinding. I've always been someone who hustles, you know, But I think it's easy to let noise from outside people kind of diminishing your dreams, right? Like, like don't be afraid to dream big. I would have if someone would have told me five years ago that I would pivot into a new business, become COO, grow at 20x, I would have said you're crazy. And but, but I've never doubted myself. And so I would say just keep grinding and dream big. Because sky's the limit.

[C]

I love it. Harrison Crumb, the Chief Operating Officer for Ally Waste. Thanks so much for sharing with us on the Second Command podcast.

[A]

Thanks Kerman. It's been a good time.

[C]

We'll see you at our next monthly Mastermind call for the CO Alliance. Thanks, Harrison.

[B]

You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herald. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.