Junk Removal to $5 Million With Zero Debt at 22 | Kirk McKinney

In this episode, junk removal founder Kirk McKinney joins host Shawn Lynch to unpack how he built Junk Teens from a single pickup truck into a $5 million operation with zero debt at just 22 years old. Kirk started the business alongside his younger brother at age 17 in Massachusetts, with no outside funding, no formal business plan, and no certainty the concept would work. What you are about to hear is not a highlight reel. It is the honest and deeply instructive story of what it takes to transform a junk-removal side hustle into a nationally scalable brand.


Shawn and Kirk break down the full evolution of Junk Teens, from reselling speakers and scrap metal at the local dump as a teenager to managing eight Isuzu dump trucks, a team of 25 people, and a revenue target of $5 million in a single year. Kirk shares the exact moment he chose to reinvest his profits into a dump truck rather than buy his dream Hellcat, explains why hiring a great operator is more valuable than managing every system yourself, and walks through how tools like Jobber, GoHighLevel, and a virtual assistant team in the Philippines transformed a million-dollar side hustle into a real scalable home service company. The conversation goes deep on why social media has become the most powerful press and public relations engine for home service businesses right now, how Kirk plans to expand Junk Teens across privately owned locations in major US markets, and what most junk removal founders get wrong when they try to scale past seven figures. Kirk also opens up about the challenge of balancing family and business, his honest take on the college-versus-entrepreneurship debate, and how he is using AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT to project the numbers behind a $100 million vision.


Whether you are 17 years old with a big idea and no resources, or a seasoned founder trying to break through the seven-figure ceiling in your home service company, this episode delivers the kind of real and actionable insight that most business conversations skip entirely. Subscribe to the Official Success Formula channel so you never miss a conversation that gives you a genuine advantage. Listen to the full episode at the link below and connect with Kirk McKinney on Instagram and his personal YouTube channel to follow the Junk Teens story as it unfolds.

Website- https://www.junkteens.com/
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/junk.teens/

Tune in every Tuesday at 10 AM for another inspiring success story, along with the proven formula to help you achieve your own goals. Don't miss out on the insights that could change your life!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

My guest today is only 22 years old.

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Actually, used to bag groceries for $12 an hour. I used to think that the way I was going to live my dream life was by working a job.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

He had no investors, sold everything in my room. He has no trust funding, and he's making more money than people that are twice as it. One man's catching another man's scratchers. What is he doing?

SPEAKER_02 0:22

I'd like to ride my bike 10 minutes to the dump and be carrying like TVs and speakers home and my arms riding with like no handlebars sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

I know it sounds different, but wait number.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Last year we went from around $1 million to $3 million in sales.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

The biggest mistake that almost put him out of business came to the point where I had to make a decision. And this one decision he made changed everything. Who were you before junk teens? Like how old were you? Tell me the story. Tell me the story for when you started, you know, what even made you come up with the idea, everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Uh no one's ever asked me the question in that way. Who was I before junk teens? And that's like a really that's definitely something that I would I want to answer because I was never really fully an entrepreneur. I used to think that the way I was going to live my dream life was by working a job. And I actually used to bag groceries for $12 an hour in Massachusetts. That was the minimum wage at the time.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

What did your parents do?

SPEAKER_02 1:39

So my parents actually own a tree service. They've owned it for 30 years. So you can kind of see the crossover into like the the home service business. But I actually used to work with my dad too from like age 13 until I was like 16. Um, every summer I would work with him.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Which probably gave you a ton of skills that you normally wouldn't get inside of just school.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

I saw how he ran his business and I learned how I would want to and how I wouldn't want to based on the way he grew his company, and that taught me a lot, honestly. And just being able to go and see how he would, you know, talk to customers, sell the job, um, everything that that he would do. It just gave me like the baseline confidence to go out and do it on my own in some way. And like I used to work with him and I would do I would do tree work, and it was like a war zone every day. Like that work is brutal. Like it's in the summertime, like you have sawdust all over you, logs falling down, like one wrong move, and it's it's super high liability. So like I did not want to be in the tree business, and my dad always asked if I wanted to take it over, and like I also just didn't like the idea of having the family business where my dad would still be telling me what to do in some way or another. Like, I just wanted to really be free and have my own thing. So, like, I I used to tell him in maybe my second, third year of working with him, that I wanted to try landscaping, and like one day I was working with him, and there was this kid that had a trailer, was doing landscaping, so I like ran up um away from the job site and I started asking him questions about what he was doing, and like just meeting that kid, like it was my first time kind of having hope that I could like maybe try something on my own. But my dad was always like in the very beginning, he when I told him I wanted to do landscaping, I think maybe it's because he wanted me to continue working with him because I did such a good job. Like, um, he he wasn't like all for me like doing my own thing. So I I didn't actually completely start how old were you at that at that time? Yeah, at this time I was like 15 years old um when I met this random kid doing landscaping, but then that kid was also like 14 or 15, and I was like, wait, like this kid is mowing lawns for $50 a piece and does them in like you know, 20-30 minutes. Like, that's more than I'm doing with this tree work, and this stuff is brutal. Like, hmm. I wonder if I could do that. But like that just got the idea in my head. I never like took that anywhere, but uh really like my actual journey to entrepreneurship started from a bike ride with one of my friends. We were just like riding bikes one day and we discovered the dump that was near my house. So in Massachusetts, like we don't have landfills, it's a transfer station where homeowners bring their stuff, they throw it in dumpsters. Um, and every town is different, but like in this town, it was a it was a wealthier town, and there was a lot of nice stuff that would come through this transfer station. So like I got lucky, I was riding my bike and I saw this uh pair of speakers that were left next to a dumpster, and I was like really passionate about audio equipment at this time. I wasn't thinking like, oh money, look at this, I'm gonna make some money here. I was like, no way, like a pair of speakers. I want to bring these back to my house and and have a little speaker system. So like I I saw that value in the trash, and it's like one man's trash is another man's treasure, and that's how I felt in that moment. So I I asked the guy the dump and he said I could take them. So then once I brought those home and tested them out and they worked, that was like a spark that like it just started there, and then I kind of continued with that spark. And every time the dump was open, it was only weekends and Wednesdays, I would literally ride my bike there every single time they were open, and I would like look around. And I just I eventually collected so much speaker equipment in my room that it looked like a hoarder's house. And this was the actual moment when I discovered entrepreneurship because my mom was like, Kirk, you have to throw all these speakers away, like the your speaker system's shaking the whole house, and like your room looks like a mess. And then and then at that point, I was like forced into a situation to figure out what to do with all this value I had collected that was driven from my passion of audio equipment, not because I wanted to make money, and then I ended up selling my first radio on Facebook Marketplace for $50, and I made more money working any job I'd ever worked in a shorter amount of time and doing something I loved. And then that's when I realized like, okay, this is like I'm working for myself and this is entrepreneurship, and I love this. So I I literally just like sold everything in my room, and from that point started just collecting anything I could find from the dump and reselling it on Facebook Marketplace, and that's how it like really all started.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

100% margins. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Yeah, it was and I rode, I had to ride my bike because I didn't have a car, I didn't have a license. So I'd like ride my bike 10 minutes to the dump and be carrying like TVs and speakers home and in my arms, riding with like no handlebars sometimes. And I did anything I could to like, you know, hustle and and make money.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

Yeah, yeah, that's really cool. How much did you save up? Like, so what's what's the next step? So you started selling speakers and did your parents you're still in school at the time because you're 16 years old-ish.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

And what was the plan? Did your parents like, hey, you need to go to college? Or what do you what are you gonna do after you graduate? What happened after that?

SPEAKER_02 7:15

So I I was reselling stuff when I was like like 16, 15 to 16 years old. And then there was like a little break during COVID when I wasn't allowed to sell stuff. And my brother during that time, we would go door knocking, asking people for lifting weights to build our home gym, and we would sell them on Facebook Marketplace for like three dollars a pound. So we f if we found like two 45 plates, that was almost 300 bucks right there. And and we would it was really successful, like because everyone would just see the kids. We we would have our little pitch, like, oh, all of our friends are home playing video games, and we just want to build a home gym. Like, do you have any leftover weights in your basement? So, like, I don't know. That was a little break in between, but from like the very beginning of discovering the dump to the point where we actually started doing junk removal, definitely made like tens of thousands of dollars just selling junk. And I I had like saved it up. Um, and I was into dirt bikes at the time, and like that's why I wanted money because I just wanted to buy like my dream dirt bike. I had a KX 250F, bought it new. Um, and then at that point I transitioned. It was when I got my license. I transitioned from like loving dirt bikes to then being into cars.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Yeah, and uh your story sounds like mine. Like I had big speaker system in my house, and then the like the same thing. I had dirt bikes when I was growing up, and I was really into them. And then this exact same thing happened when I started getting 16 and I got my first car. I'm like, man, all these other cars are a lot cooler than this, and I was always like working toward that.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

Yeah, exactly. So like I started with like a little Cadillac DTS, like a grandpa car, and I like built a subwoofer.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Did your parents buy it for you?

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Did you buy it? No, I bought it with um with money I had saved from working with my dad.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

And like how much was the first car?

SPEAKER_02 9:07

It was like $3,500. It was like a little like grandpa car.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

No, no, no, no. That's cool. Well, I'm making my kid buy his own car too. He's gonna have to figure out how to make money to buy his own car and get enough for him.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Yeah. Um, so I started with that car, built a subwoofer system in the back of it. I made a YouTube video of it and it like got like 70,000 views, like because people loved it. It was a really good system. And then, like, because I was passionate about audio equipment, like I said.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah, and you're showing people how to do it, you building the whole thing and how to hook it up.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Yeah, but then like that car was how I started. But I really I was in high school and I just wanted to have the coolest car in the school. So I was like, all right, this grandpa car, like, sure, it shakes the whole school when I drive by, but like it's like I actually want like a fun car. Um, saw it, I was like looking up best cars for high schoolers under $10,000. And I realized like you could get a V6 Challenger for under 10k. So I like was always on Facebook Marketplace looking up like these cars. I was look trying to get like a 350Z, like you know, all the cars you would look up, a GTI, Volkswagen, and um the Challenger was the one I found. And I got a $9,000 2011 V6, and that was like my first time like getting a nice, somewhat nice car. And um, I eventually worked my way up to the Hellcat that I have now, but like yeah, the the entrepreneurial journey, like part of my drive in the very beginning was these cars, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Which is a lot of young people's drive, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

But like um we had that. I I was able to get the challenger from just like side hustles, working with my parents, working my job at the grocery store. Um, but I hated that job. So as as soon as I realized I could sell junk and actually make like, you know, maybe a thousand a week reselling trash or junk people would throw away. That's when I quit my job at the grocery store and went all in on entrepreneurship. But then what what year was that?

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Or how old were you at that time?

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Yeah, that's that's when I was 16. Okay. When I did that, because that's when I got my license too. I was driving back and forth from the grocery store. I was able to pick up stuff with my my Cadillac and resell it. Um, but then eventually, like being at the dump and just I would literally camp out there all day long waiting for people to bring the best stuff by, and I would snipe it before the other people would get to it. And um, I had like a whole system going for reselling stuff, but then eventually I realized people would pay me to take their junk and then I could also resell it. And that is when I teamed up with my brother and we bought the pickup truck. It was uh 2007 Ford F-150 that we bought for four grand and like first work truck, yeah. Our first work truck.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

So what what was the actual moment though that you decided to get like I'm gonna I'm gonna sell junk, I'm gonna go knock on somebody's door and I'm like try to sell my first job. Did you so you bought the truck first?

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Yeah, so um the reason I bought the truck first is because I was able to it would help me with like transporting items from the from the junkyard. But there were guys that worked at the dump that did junk removal, which is how I was originally introduced to the idea because they saw my hustle and I would to like build the relationship with these guys at the dump, I would stay after hours and help them clean everything up, and then they would start saving stuff for me. And and then that I didn't have to like camp out there all day because I sometimes I just show up and they had a pile of stuff for me that I would go resell. Um, but eventually, like I did junk removal with them, and this guy would pay me like $50 an hour to do junk removal, and I was like, hold on a second, like how is this guy able to pay me this much and still like I would I would literally do the whole job for him and then he would collect the money at the end. And I was like, wait, so at this point, I'm like doing the whole job. He's able to pay me this much and still walk away with money. Like, how could I not just try this on my own? Um, so that's when I at that point, like I started bringing my brother with me on these jobs, we would do them, and then I realized I could do it with him. I was like, why not just get a truck and start doing this with my brother?

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Sold directly to the customer.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Exactly. So, like, um in my head, it was a good transition with getting this truck from like reselling junk to being able to actually do junk removal. And we already I already had like a little side hustle thing going, and um, it was really like once we bought that truck, it was a way for me to like take it serious and start um start doing the junk removal. It gave me an excuse to like go all in on something.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

How did you find your first customer? Like, what was the the very first day you got in your truck? Did you just knock on somebody's door? Where did the first customer come from?

SPEAKER_02 14:04

First customer was actually a word of mouth referral from the guys at the dump, literally just to move someone's couch for a hundred bucks. And I loved it. Like, me and my brother, we we went out, moved a couch, made a hundred bucks, and was like, oh, this is awesome. We used our pickup truck, but then the real way we started getting customers was through posting on next door and local Facebook groups and giving business cards to everybody and telling everybody about it. And that was the very beginning. And honestly, like we started with our business called KJ Removal and Disposal. We weren't junk teens from day one, so we we did a little bit of landscaping, moving, junk removal, anything we could with our pickup truck to make money because we just wanted to, you know, it was my first summer of working for myself too. It's at um it was actually seven. I was 17 when we bought this pickup truck. My brother was 15. And we're just doing whatever we could to fill up our our days. There wasn't enough junk removal jobs for us to be like every day working, so that's why we we tried out all these different trades.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

And so you didn't have you didn't set up LLC at first, you didn't set up a website, you just went and sold jobs until it worked.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

And that's where I think a lot of people get tripped up, is they think that like they have to do all this stuff before they actually start making money and proving a concept. Where like in my head, it's like I don't want to like do all the extra stuff until I know it's actually gonna work. Like just test it out.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

That is where most people get tripped up, especially when they're younger. They think that like, oh, I I gotta have my LLC to start, I have to do this, I have to get this in place. And that's what they keep some from never even starting. I think they use it as like an excuse to like keep learning maybe a little bit more, but they never pull the trigger. So you know, just for everybody listening, you don't need any of that, you need to do what he said and go prove up the model. Like, is it gonna make money? And then you can quickly go do all that stuff and turn it into a real business.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Exactly. And then basically, like, I'm really thankful that I had parents that were already running a home service company because that made the transition from us with like a little side hustle to actually running a real business. Because my my mom saw us and what we were doing, and she was like, All right, you guys are actually running a real business here, like you have to set up this stuff. And I didn't even know what an LLC was. Like, yeah, I was just in my head, I was like, All right, I want to I want to keep upgrading my car, like I need more money for that. And I just was we were doing this work, but then my mom helped us set up a sole proprietorship in the very beginning, just to have some sort of structure there. And my mom has helped us with our accounting um in the very beginning. Now we have an accounting firm, we we have a team, like you know, at this point, it's my mom still is a little bit a part of it, but we have grown ourselves to completely independent of our parents and stuff. But yeah, our parents never gave us money, the only thing they ever gave us was the support when we had questions and like, for example, like some advising when they saw, like, okay, you need an LLC. It's like, okay, yeah, let's set that thing up. And um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

I I feel like I mean that that's kind of what I would uh plan to do with my kids. Like, I don't want to give them anything, yeah. But then they stop trying to figure it out. And sometimes if you have money given to you for something, you're less likely to go and do what you did and like really hustle to try to figure out, try to prove a business model. They might be wasting money on different things. But what I am gonna give him is the skills, every skill he needs to start the business like before he even gets to your age, is like is my hope. And then, you know, hopefully I don't have to give him any money. Hopefully he can figure it out himself and go hustle like you did, is the goal. I just think you learned so much from doing that. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, that's that's super cool.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

And and then um, so in our first summer of working together, we were doing all these different side hustles because in my head it was like, all right, the more work we do, the more money we're gonna make. And then it was it was like our second year when I just did some reflecting during the slow season in the winter when I was in school. And like a big reason why I started all of this is because I wanted to buy my dream car. I wanted to buy a Hellcat, and I wanted to have a Hellcat in high school and and have the coolest car in the whole school. But then I kind of came to this point where I had to make a decision. Am I go am I going to create a real business or am I just gonna spend all of my earnings here on my dream car and flex on everyone? And that's when that's when I made the mature decision to turn what we were doing into a real business and reinvest every penny that we had made into a dump truck and then rebrand from K and J removal and disposal to junk teens. What gave you the idea for the name? I I like remember this so well. It was I was just do I was upgrading every part of the business, creating a website, and I was like, all right, we definitely need a better name. And I was in my room one night, and I had like maybe 20 different names written down, and I like wrote down the name Junk Teens, but I think I like skipped past it like a bunch of different times, and uh I think I was just like laying in my bed right before going to sleep, and I remember it just like clicking so much that I like ran into my brother's room and I was like, Jake, I got the name for for the company, it's gonna be junk teens. Think about it, we're teenagers, that's why people are hiring us, and we do junk removal, so it's like teenagers, junk removal, boom, and like we would always post on these Facebook groups like, Hey, we're local teenagers doing this. People want to help you out, exactly, and like that's why we grew so much because we found this niche of like Facebook moms and and our local community that would literally hire us just because we were young, and I branded the whole company and the mission around that because that was our bread and butter, that was our competitive advantage, and and yeah, so like I turned the company's whole mission into that direction that worked, and I built a brand around it.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Not a lot of people will take all the profits and go invest in the business, and that's where people don't understand is when you start something to grow it to the size that you've already grown to, that's what it takes. Like you can't take all the profits out, or you'll never have the money to grow and go buy trucks and go spend more money on advertising and go hire more people if you're pulling all the money out of the company. So one thing my business, my very first business partner taught me pretty well. He was very like conservative guy, and he's like, Hey, you can't be a burden on the business, and so always remember that. And luckily, I wanted to create something really big too, although I still love cars a lot, but I knew that if I created something really big, I could buy whatever I wanted at some point. Like it wouldn't even matter.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

That's what I thought of.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Yeah, it's like you can go buy a hundred Hellcats at some point, you know. You know, in delayed gratification, it's like the best skill that you can have. It's like, oh, I can I can buy a Hellcat right now, or I can buy a new an even a new car, a nicer car and a Lamborghini, but it's like or I could just wait in 10 years, I can just buy whatever I want, like anything. And it won't, you won't it it won't even be a struggle. Like it's not you're not spending your last dollar on it.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

So it's super cool. Not a lot of people have that. I think that that's why especially with so I love what social media's done as far as like giving people access to information and other people and they're like seeing what's possible. But the downside is it looks like everybody like can have an overnight success. Like, oh, they just opened this business and they bought a Lambo. It's like, no, it's not really like that in real life. If you want to build a really strong big company, you can. Can't spend it all on just things that are not gonna grow the company.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Yeah. Exactly. And I think that there's this maybe false perception that social media is why our business is so successful. And it wasn't even until our third year in business that I started posting on social media. And for home service companies or like boring businesses that that aren't really like involved in social media, you literally don't need it at all. And the way I see it is that it's like steroids for the business. Social media, all it does is like add a little cherry on top or some fuel to the fire to make it unique and original. But I don't love the idea of having the social media be the foundation of the company because it is volatile, like you're relying on on views, or you're relying on like a certain audience or niche working, and like I'm happy that we started this thing without social media being like a big part of it.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Driving the leads.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Yeah. I mean, I think I guess you could say Facebook is social media, but it's different than like all the hype stuff with TikTok, Instagram, YouTube that like the younger generation's on. We were just targeting the old people that had money in the beginning to build a business, and then we started getting into the more hype stuff once we needed to hire more people and build a real team and a brand. So I think like the image images that people see on social media makes them think that like they need all these views and they need all this stuff to even be able to reach this level. And like we we would have been able to be making millions of dollars if we never posted any videos on on social media.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yeah, you still have to have a really good service. Yeah. You have to do a really good job and you have to do it at a fair price. Like somebody has to see value in it. It's not just they're not just buying because it's on social media. Exactly. Yeah, you still have to have a good service to add repeat business to get referrals to uh to continue to grow. Take us through the typical job from like the foment the moment like you get a lead and then uh then you're like headed to the house. Like how does that work?

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Yeah. Right now, a lot of it is residential homeowners. And essentially, like a a pretty common situation is there's a garage that needs to be cleaned out because over time people have just accumulated stuff there. Oh no, holiday decorations, toys that the kids aren't using anymore. As life goes on, people accumulate different things, and the garage.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

That's a big one for us. Like the toy thing gets yeah crazy. And I don't I don't buy him anything, like we buy him nothing, but you have birthdays and family members and people that know us, and they come over and bring gifts, which is fine. But it's like, and then he plays with like a quarter of it, you know, and then it's like we I I give a lot of it away, and yeah, I mean it just builds up. If not, I'll have just endless amounts of just crap in my house.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

Exactly. And there's probably a certain spot in your house that you start storing that stuff, whether it's the basement, garage, shed. So like there's these common places where stuff accumulates, and that's a pretty common one is people just literally hire us to clear out that space because they're at a time where maybe their kids went to college or they just realized by something made them realize that this space is all taken up by this clutter and they want to park their car in their garage again, or they want to be able to use their shed for their lawnmower or whatever the situation is. Like people call us to clean the place out. Another really big one that drives a lot of revenue is clean outs. So, like this one happens when people are moving. Yeah. If you owned a house your whole life, you accumulated all this stuff from your whole lifetime, and now you're moving to a new house. Maybe it's a family relative that passes away and we're cleaning out all of their old stuff, or it's a family that's moving to a bigger house because their kids are in college or they've saved up and can move to a bigger house, whatever that situation is, we'll go in there and and pretty much every room in the house will have stuff and we clear it out with our dump trucks. And a clean out could be anywhere from like 4,000 to 20,000 for a house clean out, is usually like a good range that those jobs go for. And then let's say a regular garage clear out, like that could be, you know, anywhere from 300 to 1200, but like we don't price it based on these specific numbers that I'm coming up with. It's based on how much stuff there is.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

So that was my second question. So how do you price a job without sending people all over town to like give these quotes everywhere? Is it just buy pictures? Like, how does it work?

SPEAKER_02 26:50

Well, um, we actually do have to send people all around to give these quotes, but I'll explain the process. Essentially, the leads come in, people need the job done. Our office staff right now we have we have five virtual assistants in the Philippines that take these calls, and we have a quality control process. So, like there's a series of questions that they'll ask them on the phone. We have a forum on our website where people enter the information and the virtual assistants make sure that every piece of information, every question is asked for each lead before we go out and provide the quote. And essentially, once we have that information, we'll send out two guys in a truck and they'll quote that job. And we tell them that when we give the price, we're going to be available to do the job at the same time while we're there. Smart, yeah. So that's that's the actual process of delivering the service.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

I guess what's the close rate then? So if you show up to, you know, 100 jobs, like how many do you get?

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Our current close rate is like 77%, and we really want that to be around 90 right now. And so we're I literally had a meeting like two days ago about everything we're gonna do to try to improve that. And it's not like it we're not like how do you do it without lowering price?

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Because so you go, is someone still wanting to shop? What's the main reason that you're not closing them that day?

SPEAKER_02 28:23

I think there's like two reasons there. One is a little bit of lead qualifying before we show up on those jobs, and then two, it's literally just value communication from the guys in the trucks. Because sometimes people say, Oh, I need to talk to my husband, or I need to uh I need to think about the price, and then you start uh trying to understand the situation better. Like, why do they want this stuff gone? Are they actually gonna call another company? Is it about the price? Because if it is about the price, then like maybe there's room to work, but most of the time we're pretty firm on our pricing. So, like literally just understanding the customer situation will increase the close rate by a lot because you're able to communicate the value of the service better to them, and then and then they want it done.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

You're also standing there, like we can start right now.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Yeah, that's that's a huge, huge part of it.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

That's a big one. If I I didn't even think through that, but man, once you get a quote and like, hey, we can we can get this out of here today.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Yeah, when we started though, for for the first three years, my brother and I ran our whole business all the way from zero to a million dollars through Apple Notes. We didn't even have a CRM. We were my brother was like the customers would call him, he would write down like a a line on our Apple note, like the time that we had to do the job, what or what time we wanted to do the job, what kind of items they had, the person's name and the address. And my brother would copy and pass copy and paste these line items and send them to the guys that were going out. And we were able to do this all the way up until we had three trucks, and then things were so chaotic that like we were like forced into a situation where we had to hire someone to take phone calls, do emails, and then we had to find a better organization for our communication. But like if we knew about quoting jobs on site before, we would have been able to grow a lot quicker than even now because it was um it was last year we went from around like one million to three million dollars in sales simply by just using a CRM and having an office team to take the phone calls and the process of delivering the service. Before that, we used to quote jobs through text message, and then when a customer said yes, like that's when we would put it on our schedule. Okay. But just like you said, when we're standing there, we can get the job done there. That significantly increased our close rate because junk removal is a very immediate thing.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

We yeah, it's like they're either moving or they're just like tired of the stuff being there, or they having another kid and they need to clear out this whatever, and like, or they're remodeling their house and they need to get the stuff out. It does seem like a kind of a time-sensitive thing.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

How how do you so how do you price the jobs? I I heard you say earlier, you know, it's based on like the room, the the amount of stuff in a room. Like, how do you how do you price it?

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Yeah, so we have a pricing binder in each truck that the guys use as like a reference and a baseline, but essentially there is the cubic volume that it takes up in the truck, and then the accessibility, and then there's some items that we might have a surcharge for, like air conditioners, mattresses, tires.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

I was gonna ask that. Yeah, what do you is it a special dump that you have to take those to?

SPEAKER_02 31:58

So yes. Um there's there's dumps that we can pretty much dump everything, but they'll charge us extra for each item. So what we do, we have a warehouse and we'll separate some of the items, like tires. We have a little pile of tires, we have a tire guy that comes and picks those up. But like let's say you were a one-man show with a with a pickup truck and trailer or something, you you could go to a a lot of different tire shops, they'll take your tire for 10 bucks versus the dump, we'll try to charge you 60.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

And scrap metal, for example, you can get paid to remove that. But for the pricing, yeah, I want to get more like specific on the pricing so you can understand better. The baseline is the cubic volume it takes up in the truck, and then we have these small factors that will affect every single job, and that's like why we have to quote them in person because every job is so unique and there's so many variables that affect every job that there's not just like a systemized pricing model that we can use, and there there is, but it only goes so far because every job is so different.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

Is AI good enough now to where if you took a picture, could you understand the cubic volume close to it to where you could do it faster?

SPEAKER_02 33:20

You definitely could, and that is something that we've thought about. And we tried it two years ago. It I don't think it was been that good two years ago. It's definitely something that could be done now, but people really value the human-to-human connection. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

And just a guy going in there looking at what it is and then giving the price.

SPEAKER_02 33:41

When we do the job, it's not about the price, it's about the value and it's about what they actually need done. So if you turn your system and your process into delivering the price, that's you're just not gonna be able to grow as big of a company as you could have.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Also, your margins won't be as good. I've I've dealt with this. I'm never gonna sell anything off price ever again in a model.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

Exactly. So we a hundred percent could develop a model like that and it would work at this point with the technology we have, but it's it's just a lot smarter for us to be able to quote the jobs in person. And like, if you were to ask me that like even a year and a half ago, I wouldn't have had the same answer because we've changed so much in our business. Like for the first three years, we were quoting based off of price. We would send the customer the price, and if they said yes, then we would go do the job. And I think operational or our operational efficiency was a lot higher then because it would just be like job after job, boom, get paid. But then, like the the amount of jobs we would actually close was less. Our price per lead was higher. So overall, I feel like we're able to deliver a better service now because we do it the way we are. But for the first three years, we had no idea. We were just like doing whatever we could and figuring it out. Like being it, like we literally used Apple Notes and didn't have a CRM for three years up until a million dollars. We were running like a million dollar side hustle, basically.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

That's how everything starts. Nobody has it all figured out on day one.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

What walk us through how you handle? I know we talked a little bit about tires, mattresses, and some of the disposal. And then earlier today, you talked about or earlier in the conversation, you said I sell a lot of this stuff when you were buying it at the dump or getting at the dump for free and then reselling it. So when you pick up a whole garage full of stuff, is there somebody that sorts it, like recycling scrap metal, you know, selling the tires, like selling this furniture on Facebook Marketplace, donations? Like how how do you like divvy up all the stuff that you pick up?

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Yeah, so our warehouse is basically like our little hub that all the trucks run through all day. And we have a lot of dumps that we go to in Massachusetts, but the warehouse is how we're able to repurpose a lot of things and it saves us money on dump fees, but it's also really good for marketing because people love the idea of their items being repurposed. So, what we do is like the office staff is trained on jobs that will have reusable items, so like they create schedules around like having our warehouse as a pit stop, and the guys will just drop off reusable items there. We also have a metal dumpster, so like the guys will just drop their metal in the metal dumpster. Sometimes, if you have like a full truckload, you could get it all the way back down to a quarter truckload just by maybe putting some furniture in the warehouse and unloading your metal. Um, so with our warehouse, we resell a little bit. It's honestly not a big revenue driver, and it's a huge hustle if you actually wanted to turn that into a business. It's very hard to build systems around reselling random individual junk items. At that point, we would have to open a thrift store for it to actually become some some sort of business. So we just have like a guy on our team right now who um sells stuff on Facebook Marketplace pretty much, and we have a percentage split with that. But the big one is our donation partners. We have bins in our warehouse. We have like 20 different bins labeled from like toys, books, clothes, electronics, and all these random items in categories. Yeah. And they have to be different categories, or else it's hard to find someone that will pick them up.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

And so you have different charities, different donation places swinging by every week. Yeah. Is it a weekly basis, a daily basis? Like how how often do they come?

SPEAKER_02 37:44

Um, in the summer, it can definitely be weekly or bi-weekly. In the winter it's slower though, so like it can be like bi-weekly to monthly. But usually we like collect a bunch of stuff and then we'll do like one day where we just empty the whole warehouse instead of doing more consistent pickups. How big is a warehouse? It's like 3,800 square feet. Okay. Yeah. And then we also have a little like concrete pad where we have our metal dumpster, throw some tires and stuff there, and then we bring them to a tire shop when the stack is big enough. But yeah, like the repurposing is something that we do more for like the peace of mind with our clients to know that their stuff isn't all going to the just straight to the landfill or the dump. But there's not like a ton of money in the reselling, honestly, which is why we started doing junk removal because it's a real business that you can scale, delegate, and build systems around. And reselling junk is not easy to do that. Maybe with AI these days, you could have like a claw bot that like manages your Facebook marketplace, and maybe it's a little bit more systemizable, but like it's um it's not like the best business to be in, in my opinion. And I couldn't see myself scaling a reselling business nationwide. Like I wanted to go big.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

Yeah, you focus on your core business. You can always find somebody, like you said, if there's somebody that'll partner and you can just split it and maybe get another revenue stream, but you're not.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

You're not doing anything. They're just coming to pick it up and they're selling everything or reselling everything. I mean, like almost almost consignment.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we have like wholesalers that will come and like, you know, for a bunch of furniture, they'll fix it, flip it, and they'll just give us money for it.

SPEAKER_01 39:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. What's the most what's the most common mistake that you think when people were starting junk removal businesses they make when they first start?

SPEAKER_02 39:37

Yeah. I think that they overcomplicate what junk removal really is. So for example, the reselling could be an easy way to overcomplicate it. And I mean, I even did that. Like we would have grown a lot quicker if I knew everything I did today. And in terms of like mistakes, not planning out the dumping routes before you go all in on providing the service, because you know, that could significantly affect your profit margin right there, the efficiency of your schedule, knowing where you're dumping, how you're gonna get rid of your scrap metal and not have to pay for it, or be able to donate certain items and not have to pay for disposal there. Um, so like dumping route is huge, and then the actual setup, it depends on what your goal is. If you don't want to be the operator forever, uh truck and trailer is probably not the best setup because to find someone to be able to drive a trailer is like pretty hard versus if you had like an asuzu higher liability too, yeah, right? Yeah, higher liability. If you had an Isuzu dump truck or even a flatbed with walls built up on the side, like it's a lot easier to find someone to drive a truck like that and train them. It's the same thing as driving a U-Haul. Yeah. And um, so like being intentional about what your equipment is, and like even us, we made 120k in our first year with just a pickup truck, no trailer. If we had a trailer, we would have got a lot further, but our parents wouldn't let us park a trailer in the driveway. So it was all we could work with. And if if people like have the space for a trailer or like can be intentional about the equipment that they have, that's another not mistake, but something that could be thought through to like change how quickly you grow.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

What about losing money on a job? Do you lose money on jobs anymore? Or I'm sure you have in the past. Like, what what does somebody need to look out for for that? Because maybe by the time you factor in, if I were to think about like your gas and your dump fees and like everything, if you're not charging the right amount, you could easily be breaking even all day or losing a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 41:52

Yeah, so I just had a meeting two days ago with the team, my brother, the manager, and an operator that we work with, and like we kind of just realized that we need to very clearly know what our break-even numbers are with these trucks, because if a truck goes out and it brings in $2,000 on the day, but our break-evens $1,500, and they and these guys worked, you know, 15 hours, then we need to start looking into those routes and figure out like what specifically happened in that day that we can avoid moving forward. And that's something that we're now starting to realize at this scale with eight Isuzu dump trucks going out almost every day. Like we need we need to find out these numbers, and that's something we're working on.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Do you buy them new? The dump trucks?

SPEAKER_02 42:42

Yeah. Because we my parents grew their business from the ground up and bought everything paid in full, never leveraged debt. And that's the way that I understood how to build a business because that's how I watched my parents do it. And we also never had a big strategy of like multiple locations or anything, and it's a home service, high hat high cash flowing business. So it just made sense for us to buy everything in full, and we're smart with our money and never amazing.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:16

Yeah. So all eight of our trucks are paid in full, and those trucks are like hundred thousand dollar trucks.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

Yeah, no, I'd sound and then you also have less repairs and maintenance. Like if a truck goes down, if you have a used truck, then you're not making any money for the day.

SPEAKER_02 43:30

Oh, yeah. They the used truck thing was just like we did we don't we dealt with that in our industry.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

It's okay, that's a mistake.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

Like if you're yourself, you're asking about what mistakes people make. It's like buying a used truck isn't a bad thing if you're like just starting out and you have to do anything you can to make it work. But if you're trying to if you have the budget and you're trying to build a scalable business that doesn't have problems, like like yeah, buying new is definitely the way to go. Um, and I'm not sure. If I would recommend somebody to finance a truck from the beginning, like I don't have that experience, so I don't want to speak on that kind of advice. But like for me personally, like I I had to learn how to fix my own cars and trucks. So buying used worked for us in the very beginning. But as soon as I stepped out of the truck and we realized that we're like building a business, it's not scalable. Yeah, buying used trucks is not scalable at all. But see, we're at the point where we're figuring out how we're going to go nationwide, how we're gonna make junk teams big. And that's a hundred percent a situation where I would seriously look into leveraging debt and financing trucks because like let's say we'd want if we would want to sell our company someday and exit for a hundred million, like you know, financing trucks would get us there quicker and would probably be smarter because we'd be able to allocate that capital towards a smarter area of the business to scale to that level. And the reason why we bought all of our trucks in full at this point is because we built our business slow and steady from the ground up and and it's high cash flowing and we've reinvested everything back in and we're kids, like we don't have bills to pay, and that just makes sense. But for most people, too, I feel like that's a really hard strategy to follow, and especially if we're gonna scale nationwide, like I don't think that just buying everything in full is the best the best model.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

No, it makes sense. How do you when you go bid a job, how do you handle specialty jobs like just m old hot tubs and like massive stuff that you how like how do you bid those things?

SPEAKER_02 45:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:44

Um or something out of the ordinary is in than just like a traditional room that you're going to clean up.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

We definitely start to look into the labor at that point. And if the hot tub is right outside and we can back the truck up to it, maybe maybe we have to get an extra guy or two to show up to that job, and then the guys can just roll it right into the back of the truck. That's gonna be a little bit cheaper for the customer than if we had to take out the sawzalls and start chopping up the hot tub. But if the hot tub is also built into someone's deck, that's gonna be more expensive than if it's right outside. Or the guys two days ago did a hot tub that was on like a third story deck. Like that's obviously gonna be more expensive than if it's it's the accessibility at the end of the day. So same thing for a shed. If you can literally back the truck right up next to the shed, cut it into chunks and load it into the truck, that's different than if you have to carry those chunks like all the way around someone's house. And that that labor definitely affects how we price things.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Is there anything that y'all refused to haul like that you can't take?

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Yeah, like chemicals, because you we can't like you know, you can't just throw chemicals away in the regular trash. And then um I mean there's the obvious stuff, like we're we're not like hazmat. So anything that ha that we see asbestos near, even floor tiles can have asbestos in them, so that's something that we're all kind of trained on to see. Asbestos insulation, pipes with asbestos insulation, you can you can see it, what it what it is, and then it just depends on the crew, but like some imagine if there's a really dirty, moldy refrigerator and it's full of stuff and like rotten. Um like we're gonna probably price triple what a normal fridge would be on that. And if the customer doesn't want it, want to do it, then we're fine. Like, we're on to the next one.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

What's the biggest or most unusual job that you've done since you started? Or something that just stands out.

SPEAKER_02 47:55

Yeah, I actually made a YouTube video about it on the junk teens channel, but we did a job for this homeless shelter that had a bed bug infestation, and we cleared out over 200 mattresses. But the thing is, like they had already sprayed the whole place and got rid of the bed bugs, but we still had to clear out like hundreds of mattresses, and it was it was kind of fun because we were just like chucking them all out the windows, and like you would just be walking by and there'd just be like mattresses flying out of the windows. And we we had like this was last summer, we had all five of our dump trucks there um for the for the whole day. I think it was like an $18,000 job. We had like 20 guys there, we're just listening to music and just hanging out and removing mattresses all day. So that one was interesting, and because it was a homeless shelter, there were like homeless people that kept like walking by all day, like saying crazy things while we were doing the job. So like that was um that was one, and then we did a hoarder clean out last week, and one of our guys found like three thousand dollars worth of gold. So like that kind of stuff happens all the time in junk removal. Um, but yeah, like I'm sure we found some. Oh, I I remember another one. There was a guy that got evicted, and he had a lot of collectibles, and we just took all of them, and like that's what they hired us to do. So we ended up just getting like thousands of dollars of like vintage video games, Pokemon cards, baseball cards, action figures, like just all the collectibles from like the early 2000s and 90s. We had like a ton of them.

SPEAKER_01 49:42

Reminds me of like that storage wars or whatever. Like you go bid on a thing and you show up, and it's like sometimes it's a lot of junk, and then every once in a while there's like valuable stuff in there.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

Yeah. So if you've ever watched like Storage Wars, American Pickers, the show hoarders, or pawn stars, like junk teens and what we do on a day-to-day is basically like all of those shows combined. And I was actually on pawn stars. I tried to sell Rick uh a giant rubber chicken, he didn't want it, but that's just a that came from the house, one of the houses. No, no, this is just like a crazy little side quest we did with junk teens. So I got us sponsored by Dave's Hot Chicken when we first started, like second, third year in business. And I just I just wanted to do everything I could to make make the sponsorship go well. So I made the world. Yeah, yeah. So I basically 3D printed the world's largest rubber chicken in Texas, and um, and I got it shipped out to Massachusetts. And I I remember like American Pick or sorry, Pawn Stars, they were doing a sh a series where they went around every state and they set up in in like a place and people would bring them their stuff. And I saw it on Facebook. Someone was like, Oh, junk teens, you should bring some of the cool stuff you find. And I was like, All right, yeah, like whatever antique or anything I could bring them, there's no way that that's gonna get me on the show compared to this rubber chicken here. So how big is it? It's like five and a half feet tall, and it and it squeaks too, and it's in our warehouse right now. But yeah, I just brought that thing there, and the producer immediately saw it and it stood out, and they're like, Hey, you come here. And yeah, I was like on the show from that.

SPEAKER_01 51:24

That's cool. Yeah. What about software? What software do you use? I know you mentioned a CRM a little bit. Yeah. Well, like what's the main software you use to run the business?

SPEAKER_02 51:35

Yeah, I think right now, um, the main software that we use would be Jobber, and that's how we run our scheduling. We update our customers where we're gonna be, we collect payments through that. There's a lot that we do through Jobber right now, but on the back end for accounting, we use QuickBooks. For some of our customer information management, we use Go High Level. We also use Go High Level for lead tracking too.

SPEAKER_01 52:02

Yeah, that's what most people use.

SPEAKER_02 52:03

Yeah, it's really good. And then I personally use Notion all the time for like Notion is basically like Apple Notes and Google Docs combined with way more like features and integrations. Like you can basically link your Notion to Claude and it can pull stuff from there, but it's very good for like notes organization, or if you're doing something online, like managing a team for anything creative work, it's really good. That's that's something that I use every day. Like, let's say I'm coming up with a YouTube video idea, I'll plan it all out on a notion page, or if we had like a huge job coming up and I want to, you know, do something with the team or whatever it is, I'll like just organize that whole plan on a notion page, and then I can share it with people. So that's another one. I'm trying to think if there is anything else. Obviously, like I use ChatGPT and Claude on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

I was gonna ask that. Like, are you just using like regular AI tools? Mm-hmm. Yeah, like what are you mainly using it for?

SPEAKER_02 53:09

So, as a business owner, I I'm like the visionary of the company. I mean, that's why I'm here, being able to tell our story, but also get advice from you on how we can scale junk teens from here. And I use ChatGPT and Claude for literally just asking myself questions, like business consultant.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Yeah, literally.

SPEAKER_02 53:32

So I also I think very deep about of everything, and I love to think deep about things. I like intellectual conversations, not surface level conversations, and there's always the most random questions that are so niche and deep that before what I would do, and I still do it though, is I would just call up whoever I think of in my network that is like would have the answer to that question, and I would just have a conversation for like 30 minutes with them. But now a lot of the times I'll go on Chat GPT and just ask that same question and get a very deep niche specific result. And an example is yesterday I was kind of just introduced to the word of the word agency and the idea of somebody who has high agency. So I started researching what that word means, and then I I even texted a couple people I know, and I was like, hey, like I just wanted you to know you're you're somebody in my that I know that has high agency, and like just um like being able to like learn very niche and random things like that through AI, it's to me it's so valuable.

SPEAKER_01 54:47

Yeah, the access to information is insane.

SPEAKER_02 54:50

Yeah, and and like let's say we're looking to scale junk teens to a hundred million if that's our goal, and we have five different business models that that could get us there, then I can use Claude it for projecting the numbers for figuring out which model is better, and it'll give me information that I probably wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 55:14

Yeah, it's great for data, like trying to figure out market data. The the last students in our class that we the last workshop that we did, we were teaching them how to create, you know, identify a problem, solve a problem, you know, charge for that problem, technically a business. But then also how to come up with a presentation and and pitch their idea to somebody and try to sell them on it. And you know, none of them had used Claude in the in the entire class. I mean, they they you know, this is average age was probably 17, but we had a couple 15-year-olds, mainly mainly 17, 18, and then we had a couple like 21, 22, but nobody had ever used it. And so I tried to show them that hey, don't use it as like a Google search, like use it for you know what we're doing, like data collection and stuff that we were working on. Like, so they were able to go find out information that they would have never known when they were pitching their business idea that they could have never got. I mean, maybe months and months of like just researching, but now they can just pull up all the market data, the size of the market, you know, uh who their target customer is. Like, I mean, there's so much information on there. Yeah, and so like I taught them how to do all that, and they're like, Man, this is really cool. It's just not a lot of people, still not mainstream, even though it seems like because we use it all the time. Yeah, people are just still using it as Google. Like, my mom just started using it for recipes and stuff, and like, but other than that, she was like, we were telling her more about it, like, hey, we use it for this, this, and this. And she's like, Okay, I'll try it. Like, that just still the mainstream I think is like oblivious to like how powerful it is.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

Yeah, and I I use it also for Google, but even like planning trips, like because I I like to travel a lot because I'm young before I'm 26. My mind is still developing and and sh is shaped a lot, and I really want to challenge myself to get out there and experience the world. And obviously, in business is one way that my mind is able to grow a lot, but I think traveling is another big one. So, I mean, Claude or even ChatGPT, they're really good for navigating the world.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

I was never a big traveler person, I was always so focused on business, but I like your I like perspective on it. It's like I could learn so much. The times I do travel, what it did do was like you do notice certain things that are done certain ways in different countries, and yeah, you you're like, oh, that would be interesting. That's interesting. Like, I don't like I wouldn't have thought about it that way. Like, that's what I do notice when I travel. It's like there's just so many people are doing things differently, and it does give you ideas here and there. Not necessarily the like that exact thing is gonna like change my business, but it's like, oh, you know, I would never thought of that if I would have never seen it done this way, and then it like for some reason or somehow I'll like apply it in the future at some point. Like, I remember that time I went here and happened a lot whenever because I do a lot of real estate, and so seeing the way different things are done or built or have been done, like that always like sparked ideas and like stuck with me. Yeah, and then ended up like using it at some point or like stuck in the back of my head, or it was like, what if I did it like this and then changed it a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 58:12

And then Oh, like I've I have a perfect example of this. So, like I went to Africa for the first time with my school, and we were teaching kids about entrepreneurship, and I was looking around and I saw caterpillar machines being used to build everything. And then I realized, like, okay, the whole world uses caterpillar. So I asked like some of these guys, like, why do you guys use caterpillar machines? And they said, Because it's better than buying any Chinese machine or any other machine in the world, because they'll they'll last the longest and you'll you'll um make the most money by buying the reliable machine. So that I realized, like, okay, if everyone in the world uses Caterpillar, that's a company that I understand and believe in. So I ended up putting like, you know, like 8k into Caterpillar like two years ago, and then AI, the AI boom happened, then that investment like 4X simply just because I traveled the world and and realized like, okay, this is a company that the whole world uses and it's real, and it's not like some inflated tech company. It's like I want to put my money into stuff that I actually understand, and like that's something that traveling got me. But honestly, the biggest thing for me is that back home, I am the junk teens guy, I'm Kirk McKinney, and I'm the successful entrepreneur. But when I travel, all of that is gone, and it's just me and who I really am, and nobody knows who I am back home. I don't have a reputation, I don't have anything, and it forces me to figure out who I am in the deepest way possible. And that's also part of where I've developed a stronger passion for music because sometimes when I'm out, when I'm out and abroad, I realize like music becomes something that I gravitate to. And I think part of it is because it's something that, like, no matter where I am or who I am or what I'm building or what I'm doing, music is something that I can be completely myself without any external factors. And it's also the language of the world. When I was in Africa, um, I was trying to talk to these kids and teach them some stuff, and like they were just looking at me straight in the face, like, who are you? You know, Mr. White Guy, Mr. Savior. And it was just like kind of I felt like so bad. But then I pulled out a drum from my backpack and I started playing the drums. And then one kid started dancing, another one started singing, and then eventually this entire group of kids, they were just all we were all together in this moment just because of music. And then that's when I realized that it was the language of the world, but something that was really special to me because it brought like all of us together, even though we had nothing in common, and I think that music can unite people in a way that like literally nothing else can. And I love I love that, and I think it can have a really good impact in the world. Um sorry, super side note.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:02

No, no, no, it's it's it's uh it's all perspective and yeah, uh interesting. But did you travel? Do you travel by yourself or do you travel with other people?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:12

Well, I okay, so honestly, like the first I'll like answer like a different question, but getting into this one, like when I first started traveling, I used to think that it was a waste of money that I was going on vacation.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:29

That's what I used to like. I couldn't get past that mental block. I was like, I was spending money that I could be spending on my business. Like it was really hard for me. I was uh because I was in investment mode.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:40

Oh my god, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:41

Like in it in it, and I was also taking time away from my business. And I felt like in my mind, like I'm I'm I'm vacationing, somebody's gonna beat me.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:48

Like, because I'm I'm just like doing other exact so like that's how my mind was programmed ever since I was young, and I would always think like if I'm spending money, it it has to be somewhere that it's eventually gonna come back to me. Because I I'm also smart with my money too. Like every car that I've bought, I've never lost money on it. Even the Hellcat, I've had it for three years and I could sell it and maybe only lose like 5k. They stopped making Hellcats. It's like those cars hold their value so well.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:18

I was always the same way. I was like, how can I not lose money in some doing something I like? So I was like, I always tried to make offers to buy use, figure out somebody that need to get rid of it. Like my first exotic car or higher-end car came during like when the whole world was collapsing in 2008. And yeah, it was just a random time where the guy, my my broker had like, he said, the guy has like six cars here. He's like, You just want to make an offer on it, he'll probably take it. He needs to get rid of these. And so I'm like, Man, there's no downside if I get it for this price. He's just gonna tell me no. And if not, I'll go there and buy the used car I was gonna buy anyways. And he said yes, and so that's how kind of my first like high-end car. And but then I was always like, and I'm a real estate guy, so I was like, I need some equity and everything. So I would always try to do that from then on. And you know, there's been some that I lost money on for the but for the most part, like I don't go buy a new car off the lot, like I've only bought one new car in my life, and that was a Range Rover during COVID because the used cars were more than the new cars, and the new body style coming out. Wow, yeah, it was crazy, it is insane. And the new body style came out, so I was like, Whoa, this is the first time ever that like I'm just not gonna wait till it drops in price. It was like and I needed the car anyways, and my other one had like so many miles, it was like insane, like 250,000 miles.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:36

So I went ahead and got that. That was my first new car, and still to this day, like I still buy cars that are like are good deals, or I know that I can again I might lose a little bit, but for the most part, like I'm not taking like a huge hit on these higher end cars. Yeah, and then now I'm really getting into stuff that only increases in value, like old stuff, classics, a lot of the older Ferraris that are like just keep going up and up and up. And so yeah, I'm able to enjoy it, but it's also kind of like a watch or something, like over time, like it keeps gaining more value, and so that's what I've been doing lately. So I'm I can still do my passion, but not like just like burning money on something, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:14

Yeah, that's also why I like cars, but I'm also in this weird like middle ground right now that like you know, the next step up from a Hellcat, it's hard to find a car that you can buy that's not gonna lose value. Yeah, that's tough. And that's something I like a lot about the exotic cars, is you can buy them and they can even appreciate. And like I definitely um I definitely want a car like that, and I'll drive it though. Like, I'm not the kind of guy that'll just let it sit in my garage.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:43

Uh I do, but I do too. And so I I factor that in. Like, I don't want to just buy it and look at it and be like, oh, I don't want to touch it. Like, I bought that old Ferrari and I was like, I'm modifying it a little bit, and no Ferrari collector would ever yeah do that. You know, and it's like stuff I want because I want to drive it, and it'll still be worth more, it just might not be worth like tip top collector money at some point. It'll still be valuable and still go up. Yeah, and so I I'm like, I still want to drive it, and so but I still try to get good deals. I bought that one at auction, it was the cheapest one in the country. Like, even if I modify it, it'll be really good. I went specifically to the auction to buy that car. I walked in, it ran, I bit on it, I won, and I left. And uh that's awesome. And now they're like the cheapest one in the country is like 200, and I paid 110 for it. So it's like yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, and and I think it'll be the next one.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:30

How long ago did you buy that for 110?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:32

Uh two months. Oh, wow. Yeah, this is recent. The cheapest one in the country right now is like 200.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:38

Yeah, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're keep they keep going up. So it's cool. Anyways, same thing. I try not to lose money on anything I do. Like, I'm not just gonna burn it. Like I could be investing that money into another project or real estate. Like, but I still like to do certain things. That's one of 'em. It's probably the only thing that I like technically like I wouldn't say waste money on, but um Um yeah. Not the best investment, like it from an investment standpoint, not the greatest one. Hey everyone, real quick, I just want to let you know this podcast is 100% independent. No ads, no sponsors, just real. If you're finding value in whatever we're doing here, the biggest help that you can give us is hitting subscribe and sharing this with someone who you think needs to hear it or someone that it will provide value to. That's how we continue to grow. And if you did that, I would really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:29

And would you say that thinking big is a part that has led towards your success? Like being able to dream big, think big, and have a vision that's big.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:42

I think 100%. Like even when I was younger, I was comparing myself to Steve Jobs and like Elon Musk. I'm like, I'm not doing enough. I'm like, these guys are beating me. But like that's in my mind, that's what I would compare myself to. And so I'm like, my company's not big enough. I need more revenue. And so I've always been that way. And now I have less anxiety over it, I guess, because I have more proof that I've been doing stuff for a while. So I don't, but in my 20s, I was like, always had anxiety like I wasn't doing enough, or like my company wasn't big enough for whatever reason. It was like in my own mind. And everybody like makes up a number in their head, I think, like I gotta get this company to 100 million.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:21

Why that number? I don't know. Big round number, I guess. I don't, but that back then when my company was doing 30, at all costs, I was trying to get to 100. Where I messed up too is I sacrificed a lot of margin to try and get to the hundred. And when you have such your margin keeps going down, down, down, down. Eventually you can't hire good people, and then it like you can't build better systems, get a better service. Like it, there's a point because I've never raised money, I've never had like a startup where I like had all this money and could just scale it all in two years or whatever. Yeah. And so I I made that mistake. I sacrificed some margin, which you know, trying to at all costs trying to grow to that hundred. But it was an arbitrary number that I had in my head that I that I needed to get to. So I do think the dreaming big is like always benefited me on everything. Yeah. Because whenever I start something, I don't start it like if I get into an industry, I don't do it where I'm like, oh, I could have this one building or this one uh brick and mortar store, whatever it is. Like, I'm like, oh, I can have a hundred. Yeah, how can I get to a hundred? And so that's what I whenever I invest in something, it it's always like, okay, I'm starting here and learning, but like, how how is this a business that I can like get to this huge hundred, two, three, four hundred, or just have a really good business that can continue to grow and I can have the margin to hire good people. That's how I always think about everything when I started.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:45

Yeah. When when I first started, I used to not think that way. And part of it is because I grew up in like uh my hometown. My parents only owned a single location tree service for 30 years of their life. And I'm the reason why I asked you that question about thinking big is because for me, to go back to your question earlier about traveling, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's a good alone or with other people. Like for me, traveling more than anything has really forced me to think big because when I get up and I leave the the new perspective that I view my world as is no longer my hometown. It's every place that I've been to an experience I've lived. And I think professionally I've traveled like to a lot of different places in the US, but personally, I've really challenged myself to go around the world. And my first time ever going to a country was like uh a different country than the US was a year and a half ago, is when I went to Africa. And then that trip really changed so many perspectives I had in life and allowed me to grow as an individual and allowed me to see a bigger vision for the company because it kind of broke some limiting beliefs I had and allowed me to see, think, dream bigger. But then since then I've been to over 13 different countries to different continents across the world. And like the way I see it is I'm taking one step back to take two steps forward because I could go all in on like you know, scaling and building. But when I go and I travel, it's like the best time that I can reflect and think. And for me, for me personally, it works really well. For other people, it might not as much. But I also have ADHD and I get like really distracted by my environment too.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:36

I do too.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:37

I think every high performer has some version of some so but when I travel, like it's it's so weird and niche, but when I'm in the airplane, I come up with the best ideas like it I've ever come up with. It's the same way that so when some people are in the shower or when they go on walks, they come up with their their clarity, their ideas. When I'm sitting down in my little airplane economy class cubicle seat, and I'm like scrunched up, like my brain is just thinking in the deepest, clearest way because there's no phone calls that are getting to me. There's no external factors, and it's just me and my ideas. And like those moments are, I think, when I've come to the deepest realizations or the best ideas, or I've made some of the best videos for junk teens, or whatever it is. Like the I I like that kind of um, I like putting myself in the position where I get to reflect, dream, and think. And um I like it's important.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:33

I think it's important to always like have an open mind and then always help you to dream people to dream bigger. Yeah. I think I think that's super important. So if that's the thing that gets you to do that, then it's important. And again, everybody's different, right? Like I mean not so much on on like I I don't like airplanes, but um, my best ideas are in the morning, like kind of either when I'm working out or after I work out, like anytime before 11. And not that I'm worse after that, it's just like yeah, that morning from like 5 a.m. all the way to like maybe before lunch. Like I always like that's my most creative time where I always can really think through ideas. If something happens the day before and and it's like something crazy, and I have to like really think through something, like I always like can in the morning for some reason I feel at peace enough to do it, or I I have my best idea or the most confidence. I don't know what it is. Yeah, like later in the day, it's like I don't know. That's like my my downward yeah, my downward part of the day.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:31

I I see that too. I I end up being less productive and slower later on. Like some people come up with their best ideas super late at night.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:40

Yeah, they stay up late. Like I'm I was I was always the opposite. I just wake up early, like that's that's my time. But yeah, I do I know, I know some people like you know, stay up till three o'clock in the morning, and yeah, that's where they're by themselves and they don't have any distractions and like nobody's messing with them. I think that's what it's about.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:54

Yeah, like everyone is an individual, unique person and experiences things differently. So like for me, traveling is one really good way that I improve um myself, and like for everyone, it's different, and I think it's just like something that I'm challenging myself to do right now while I'm young and I don't have like a family yet, or I don't have a lot of things tying me down, but I'm also at this point where it's a very, very hard balance between going all in on building a nationwide brand and then actually being able to travel internationally and experience the world. And like I just graduated college. It's another thing I think it would be good to talk about is college, but like just graduated and now I have all this time, and I need to find a very clear path for junk teens right now because we've built it to be a multi-million dollar junk removal company, but I'm not excited about just adding a couple million dollars onto the business each year from our location that we have right now, and maybe expanding little territories here and there. Like, I really want to go big. And traveling is definitely something that's influenced me to have that feeling inside of like, you know, it sounds crazy to say I'm not excited about making a couple million dollars each year and I'm only 22 years old.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:22

But well, there's just at some point it's like whatever your purpose is, and like whatever like gives you that fulfillment. And when you do some for a long amount of time, like those are just become numbers, like exactly it's just numbers. It's like, and so you're trying to build something big that you can be proud of, that you can like in and I get it, like you still want you the financial it's still incentive to be financially profitable, make more money, drive more revenue, but then there comes a time where you're like, I want to build something really big, I want to build a good culture, I want to build like which will in turn actually build a really good, profitable business. But I'm I'm that way too. Like, I don't you know, at some point it's like I don't necessarily need more revenue at this company, but I do want my employees to make more money, and so like it's still always a driver. Like I like that is the goal, but like I invest in certain things based on like what we just talked about. Like, is that am I gonna get a bunch of fulfillment? I was like, I don't want to do something I don't want to do anymore. I want to spend time with my family. I I do love business more than anything. I want to grow businesses, I want to spend time talking to people like you, and then the bigger thing is like I my biggest thing is I want to disrupt traditional education somehow. Yeah, make my den in it, and that that's my goal with the whole like education thing that I'm doing. We're developing a product for kids under 14. Um and these are all in addition to school because it's hard to go up against like that traditional system, and a lot of parents don't have time to or don't have the ability to pull their kids out and homeschool them and give them the right information. And so what we're developing is like in addition to school, like so, like, hey, they don't get everything that they need in life, and then that's where we come in. And and and hopefully, like that's my big like vision and fulfillment, like moving forward. Of course, we all want to grow all the companies, you know, as big as we can, but like doing this, like making this education business like a huge business that can have impact. Like, I'd be super happy every single day for sure, waking up and doing that.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:21

Yeah, I I feel like that's something that would drive me a lot is a mission like that, and that I feel like I have that too, which is why I'm so driven. And I like obviously I'm mentioning all these big numbers, and that's not the thing that I wake up and I'm thinking in my head, like, I'm so excited to make all this money. And it was in the beginning when I wanted to buy my dream car, yeah. But the numbers are more of like the baseline and the metric and the foundation of what we're building, but the deeper part of what really drives me is just knowing all these teenagers and all these people that like a lot of people are the younger version of myself who once didn't know if I could even work for myself from starting like my own little side hustle to now knowing that I could be able to build something like this. Like, I want to be able to like give that path, show those opportunities to a bunch of other mini versions of me and in their own ways, like just young, aspiring people, and give a real path and a real foundation. Because with social media, there's all this fake stuff out there, fake business stuff, like get rich quick information and things, and like the home service space is so real. You show up, you work hard, and it's not oversaturated because these days in this generation, there's not a lot of people that want to work hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:47

So, like I grew up uh, especially now seeing those things on social media, it's like they think everything is just so easy. It's like, oh, you just work remote and do whatever you want. I was like, no, that's not how it works.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:58

Exactly. So like I grew up being taught that working hard is how you get what you want, and it's not just working hard, but that that is really the foundation. Oh, just like you said, you wake up at 5 a.m. and you're you enjoy building your business. Like, there's a part of me and in just my own way that I'm the same exact way towards what I'm building, but I want to be able to like give paths and opportunities for all these other young people out there to be able to do the same thing. Yeah, me too. And like there's also guys on our team who have completely changed their lives just because of the what we've built. Like kids that were gonna go to college and and and literally like no, they know that they are not gonna be happy about their life and stuff because their parents expect them to go to college and they don't even know what they're studying and why, but then they're here, you know, building a future at junk teens, making over a hundred thousand dollars a year for themselves without more than they can get ever even going to college now, like that's super hard salary to get coming out of college.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:01

Yeah. What do you think? What do you say to those people? Like, because a lot of parents from our gener my generation still want their kids like to go to college, but I know the world's changing so fast and it's not the same as it used to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:15

What do you say to somebody that you know is on the fence of going to college, or what should they talk to their parents about if their parents are like still like you have to go to college? I mean, you did, you finished, and you had a successful business, like why you did it.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:26

Yeah, 100%. It's I would say it's completely situational. And if you have or like let's say if if I'm in the kids' situation, if my parents were paying for my college, that's a whole nother factor that's gonna affect if it's worth it. But then like, what kind of college are you going to? Like, if my parents were gonna pay for me to go get some silly degree in some topic and subject that I don't even want to learn, like, I don't think that's smart at all. Like, I think it's at least right to have a degree or a college that's around somebody's direction that they have. So I feel like most college degrees are just pointless. Um, but there are certain things, for example, like medical that really do matter. Yeah, and there's there's places in the world or engineering, for example, like there are things that really do matter to go to college, but I would say there's probably so many people out there that it just does not make sense. But you're only gonna know that based on your situation. And if you're going to college just because everybody else is, just to get a degree and because the older generation says it's how you're gonna be successful, like that's completely a reason why you shouldn't go to college. It's all they know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:47

And so it's like it's easy for them to say that, or it's it feels safe for them to like because they did that, and then it's like, oh, you go to school and then you get a good job, and then you can work your way up.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:58

Like that's that path is like not the same as a used to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:02

And so I think parents have to have more of an open mind. And then what I tell the kids, because I have a lot I I talk a lot about like I'm not sending my kid to college, like I don't I'm gonna create my own program that I know yeah, that will teach him the stuff that he actually needs in life. And then that way, whatever path he chooses, it'll be okay because he's gonna have all the skills anyways. And I don't know what he's gonna do. I hope he's an entrepreneur, but he might not be. Yeah, and but he's gonna have the skills to you know do whatever he wants in life. I tell younger guys that ask me, guys and girls, and they're like, Hey, my parents really want me to go to school. I don't know, you know, I don't want to go. And I'm like, look, kind of say what you say on the situational thing, but I'm like, if you really don't want to go, go provide proof to your parents that you can go do what you're trying to do. I said, You got long time. Like a kid asked me that the other day in in our in our class, and he's 16. I said, dude, you got two years to go. And he was starting a business, and he I said, I promise you, there's gonna be a different conversation if you go to your parents and you say, Hey, I made $140,000 in the last 12 months or whatever it is, you know. Um, you know, and I I can continue to grow this business and I know how to talk to customers, I know how to sell now, I know this. Like, that's a different conversation just than just saying, like, I don't want to go. Because in your parents, you have like there's no proof of you like, well, why should we let you not go? So that's what I tell people, like, go provide proof, and like I'm pretty sure your parents are gonna look at it differently if you can like give all this proof on why you don't think it's a good idea that you go.

unknown 1:22:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:30

But if you're just saying you don't want to go because you don't know what you want to do, yeah, that's not a lot of good, that's not a very good argument. That's what I tell them. I was like, go out and like like show them, like show them why that's it you think it's not a good idea that you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:44

I think like college is a place that it gives direction to people, but if you're somebody that knows what direction you want to go and you're you're so clear on that vision, and in a lot of cases, college would probably only take you away from achieving those dreams. And I think that college is good for very specialized skills or specific schools, for example, the one I went to or Ivy League schools, or schools that have like really crazy like international networks or like I like the business.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:20

I mean, I like the the concept around the one that you went to. Like I've oh yeah, I haven't really heard of that too much. I mean, that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:26

Yeah, I mean, if you research Babson College, it's it's a very unique business school. Like Kevin O'Leary loves Babson students. Um I I think he said it a couple times. He actually spoke at our school too.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:39

Yeah, because you're teaching somebody real business, like that that's what it should be. That's what college should be. It's like should be hands-on, it should be like like showing somebody how to do something and not just a bunch of classes to get credits and like for things that you don't know what you're gonna do in life. Like it just doesn't make any sense. And then now when you go and graduate, the thing that used to be valuable was like, I have a degree, I have a bachelor's degree, and then a company would be like, Oh, this guy might know more than somebody else. Now that's not really the case, nobody really uses it anymore, so it doesn't make any sense to spend four years and then waste a lot of your time that you could be actually learning. Like you go like learn something. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's it they're gonna have to change their business model and become more like the college that you went to where it's like very specialized. Like you come to this college for this reason, not all these like art degrees and stuff. It's like you come here because like we teach you, we are the best at teaching you this.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:36

Yeah, I I definitely think there has to be some big disruption and innovation.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:40

It's gonna happen. I don't think it would ever happen. I think AI is now going to force them to do something or they will go out of business at some point.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:47

Yeah, it it's it's the concept is so simple. Like we were talking about AI and the access to information.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:53

Like everybody has the same. You have the same as me, like pretty much.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:57

Like you used to have to read a textbook. Like, what's the point of a textbook these days when you have AI? Like the process of learning is so outdated, and like it's it's gonna eventually change itself. Um, but yeah, even like government websites are so outdated. Like a lot of this stuff, I think, eventually is gonna have some sort of just there's I feel like there's gonna be one point where everything just clicks and all these things start to be innovated.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:25

I think so too. Oh, I think they're gonna have to. Like it's like it's gonna move so fast that they're gonna be forced to, or they're gonna go out of like colleges will go out of business. Maybe not like the big five, but like all the other ones, like all the other ones that have not that name, and they were I think they're gonna have to be or they're gonna force to be changed, or like people are just not gonna go at some point.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:46

Yeah. But I also wanted to ask you, like, I kind of wanna fill you in on where junk teens is right now, and just get your advice on what you would do to take junk teens to 100 million. Okay. And maybe that's an even bigger conversation for certain details, but at least we can get a general direction. So obviously we've built everything from the ground up. We're in zero debt. We're awesome, by the way. Yeah, like um profit super rare, just letting you know. Yeah. And um, I think part of it is just because of how smart we work. We work hard and smart.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:21

Like, it's not just about like well, and you had a long-term vision, yeah, vision too.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:27

And the team, of course, like good people and taking care of our people. Like my mom is always like, Oh, you pay your guys so much. And then in my head, I'm like, I know we do, but like we pay for the best. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:40

No, I I've learned that over time. Yeah, it took me 20 years to learn that, but you definitely have to have eight players if you're going trying to go the place that you want to go.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:49

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:49

So you're already doing some of it. So I mean, you're already everything that you've already done, it you are already on the right path to get there. Now you're just trying to figure out like what's the best direction.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:59

Yeah. And so basically, like we have built the business from the ground up in five years from just a pickup truck to now we have eight Isuzu dump trucks that are around 100K each. We have a full-time team of like 20 people. If you're counting the office staff, it's like 25. That's during the summer. In the in the winter, that might go down to like 18 just because of the seasonality of junk removal.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:25

And is that is that is that do you use any like subcontractors or any like contract labor or anything?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:31

That's all that's all like our team, okay, our trucks, everything. Um, I mean, maybe like under 1% of it is is leads that we subcontract for landscaping and house demos and stuff, but like, yeah, that's minimal. And then we have our main low basically all this is grouped into one LLC right now. So we're gonna need to find a better company structure for how we scale, but we have like The main warehouse, which is where all of our trucks are. And then we have the Cape Cod territory that will probably end up doing like 800K to a million this year when the whole company is on track for five million this year. We might do a little bit under that, but like our goal is five mil. And then um we just turned on ads like up high and then down below of our main service area. And the Cape Cod location is out here by the beach area. So it's our first time like expanding to an area where we don't have like any specific connections or anything in that area. Like to the Cape, a lot of our customers had second homes and we run you run ads in the same.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:46

Do you run ads in your current areas? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:48

Okay. So we're doing marketing, we're sending our guys and our trucks out to those two territories. That's a part of our experiment of the expansion because like I don't know how scalable exactly what we've done is in this specific area across other areas. So now I'm testing the systems that we have in other areas. And in one year from now, what I would see is these two other areas that we have like started bringing trucks out to, eventually renting a small piece of land in each one, and then permanently parking a truck in each one, putting a storage container there, and then just starting a very simple version of what we have built up here in Norwood as our main spot.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:34

At what point do you need a facility? Like how much revenue do you need to be doing to have a warehouse, like to park two trucks there? Like how many trucks does it take to do a million dollars a year? Like what what's the metric like per truck? And yeah, how I guess how much yeah, so how how much is the like the fixed cost of a new location do you think per per year?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:00

So like depending on how heavy we go into the repurposing it stuff, it will vary, but we could literally start as simple as like a small piece of land where we put a storage container and a dumpster on it and park a single truck, and that could go out and make 500k in a year. And that we could probably rent in our area for like 500 a month. So like we could start as simple as that or go bigger, and then so do you know you'll get enough leads from the ads?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:35

Like you have all the data to where you know that if we go run these type of ads, this local zip code, we know we're gonna get enough leads to produce X amount of revenue.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:45

That's a system that we just put in place was our lead tracking, and now probably within six months, we're gonna have a much better grip on that and know that because we also started running ads in these other two areas, it's part of our experiment of the expansion, testing even our lead tracking system to know, like, okay, these kind of ads will scale across the board. Um, this marketing isn't as scalable.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:11

You're already on the right path. I mean, you're testing the right things that you're going to need to scale. Yeah. Once you know the ad system is working, you know you're gonna get enough leads, you know you closed X amount of leads, then after that is labor a problem. So So do when you you like, do you think it's gonna be easy to go get a bunch of teens? Is it always easy to find good enough people to go do the work?

SPEAKER_02 1:31:33

Yeah. So the thing with teenagers and college students, like when people say, like, oh, um, who do you hire? It's teenagers and college students, not just teens. And the customers don't care the difference. Yeah, of course. And like the thing is there's always a supply of kids that are looking for summer jobs, after school jobs, even gap year jobs. We have a lot of gap year kids that come through junk teens and then they'll either go back to school or they'll stay with us.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:02

And they don't need a lot of training, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:32:05

Yeah, it's a very simple thing. Just you give them your SOPs and yeah, it's like have someone is like a one-day they follow along with somebody on one day on a job, and a day to like get into it and probably like a week to a month to be able to have like your full um opportunity. That would be like we we have to train on guys driving the trucks, yeah. And then sales.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:28

The as far as like that would probably be the bottleneck, maybe. Um, it just depends.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:36

Yeah, so I I've thought through like different models to potentially scale junk teens nationwide, and I'm just curious of which ways you think might be the better direction.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:48

Well, I think you're already going in the right direction. Like, I like the idea of you like you y'all done really well where you're at, and then just testing e even if you were thought about licensing or franchising, yeah, you still need to do what you're doing and go test it in another market. Like so before it's hard to know which path to take until you finish your your six months of this test and like figure out how many leads you're gonna get, figure out how many sales you're gonna close off those leads in a in a cold market that people don't know your brand as well as your little like local town that you've been in forever.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:21

That's gonna be the first step, and you're already doing it. And so once you know how many leads you're gonna close in a cold market and you do it over and over and over again, it would be more of a point like if you know you have enough labor, it might be better to own everything and not franchise it. I feel like franchise, you lose a lot of control. They may not hire as good a people as you would. Yeah. And if you don't have a labor problem, if there's always younger people that are willing to work, and then you don't have a lead problem, like you can continue to build it yourself. You don't necessarily have to go and franchise. I feel like it sounds like you can scale it, like without going and just licensing in the model. Uh, you can go also, there's probably a lot of local junk removal companies that you could possibly go in and yeah, so like they already have infrastructure, but I just don't see them.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:14

Another another very unique thing though is like in the last two, three years of us posting on social media, I've created this like kind of group of mini versions of us, like kids that have gone out and started junk role companies and are doing between 100k and seven figures a year. And there's so many of these kids, and they follow us, they DM me, and like that's to me, I see that as like an opportunity of potential subcontractors, people who could license junk teens, and I see this audience that's so unique and original to junk teens that like no one else could ever go in there and just copy that. Like, these people have followed us, they trust us, and they've built their vision partially off of the influence of seeing what we've done. And I'm sure that if we came out with some sort of product or opportunity, yeah, not some like coaching program or something where we're gonna collect cash. Like, I want to build equity and I want to provide something that will last, not just like a quick consulting thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:17

Well, also enterprise value of the company. So if you like own everything or you're taking equity in these, like exactly so in these guys' companies. I guess the only difference I'm thinking through is like probably nobody buys new trucks, so you'd have to come in and like come in and like use the same model that you had and get them from 200k to over a million. Like, hey, you're stuck at 200, like I can come in and we can brand it junk teens, or have some type of subcontractor agreement, and like this is how we're gonna get there, and we're gonna help you scale. Yeah, so that's a possibility too, but it sounds like you don't have a problem getting labor, and as you continue to build the brand, like more people are gonna want to work for you, and then more like you already don't have a problem with labor, it's only gonna get better. It sounds like you can do it yourself, and local ads work great, like just local zip code ads, like I mean, they still work really well.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:05

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:07

I just don't know how much like how how what what market size can a city handle? Like, what what's the market size of a a normal size city, not a Houston or not a New York or not something like that, like just a regular city in America. Yeah, how much revenue can you do out of that city?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:22

A lot. And I I think I'm like pretty well networked into the junk removal space now. And one thing I've found is that 1-800 got junk, like a majority of their revenue comes from their biggest locations, not not how many different locations they have, but the ones that are placed around the big city. So, for example, we have a little five million dollar a year location that could turn into a $20 million location in the next you know, five, 10 years if we continued at it. And 1-800, you know, has the same thing across the US, but those big locations are what make up a majority of the city.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:02

Do you know how much revenue they do?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:04

I I don't I mean, I know of the company. I don't know. Is it public? Is it not public? Is it I think it is public information, but I'm pretty sure it's in like the billions now. Um, not not completely sure on that, but we're gonna find out real quick. Yeah, kind of. That's definitely a fact that would be worth exploring. I know junk removal is billion a billions of is 1-800 got junk a publicly traded company.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:27

If so, what was her revenue last year and last quarter?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:30

It is a private company, but like the the numbers I'm pretty sure are like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:36

It's not publicly traded. Uh they don't publish quarterly earnings reports, but Prive Privco estimates generate between $380 million in revenue in 2024.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:47

It's definitely more than that.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:49

Yeah, they're just it's estimates hundred to five hundred million. But that's there's no way it's way more. If your little city can do 20 million, I mean it doesn't take much to get 100. Like you could be in yeah, like four or five major cities and you're kind of already there instead of trying to go to all these little small cities all over. I mean, it makes more sense. Yeah, like so that's especially as your branding gets better and better and more people want to work for you or work with you. Like and I think it's gonna be it sounds like easy enough to not franchise it and just do it yourself and get it to a hundred million.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:21

Yeah. Another thing is though, like I want to prioritize impact and opportunity for like the younger generation is another thing. And I'm also like you, where I'm not the best at managing a lot of people. I'm not. So let's say we were to do the privately owned locations and maybe have five or ten of them and try to get that to a hundred million dollar valuation. Um, I would need someone or I would need a team or something to be able to handle those operations and operating those locations, and that's not my strong suit. So like I'm curious if you have advice on like maybe know knowing my specific skill sets, how you would scale, and do you if you need to know more about like what I'm good at and how I contribute?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:11

I think I probably know enough already. Yeah, but you just you it's you just gotta go hire good operators. I mean you can go take the 1-800 junk guys that hate their job over there and like hey, you want to piece do a piece of something big and like give them some sort of high incentive package, or I promise you it's a lot easier than you think because you are super focused on your culture and you're like really like trying to build something where like people enjoy working there. I don't know this company, but not a lot of companies are like that, like you do it. Yeah, and so it's very easy to poach really good people that are really experienced in an industry that are just like sick of you know the way it's ran, the way things happen. It's like very common, it's a lot easier than you think. So then it's about finding the right person. But I mean you can go back. I mean, easy to poach five people that are like top uh people in this business to go and like really manage operations and like yeah, it just it just you just need to make sure it's the right people and they fit into your culture. But um I it it sounds very scalable to get to get to a hundred million. Like you're already you already have all your your roadmap and like your SOPs are perfect. It's like you know, you just need to uh test test the ads. What do you do with the lead when it comes in? So it's so you're getting so you so you run ads, someone fills out a form on either Facebook or it goes to your website, like what happens after the lead comes in?

SPEAKER_02 1:40:38

Then the the office team will make sure that all the information is there, filled out on the form. And if it's not, if it is or if it isn't, they'll call the customer regardless to get more information and just to confirm like the kind of connection. And then from there, once all the information's collected, it will go to the schedule as a booked job. Okay, and that's where also the virtual assistant will coordinate the schedule when they're on that call. Oh, which day are you free for our guys to come out and give you a no obligation in-person quote?

SPEAKER_01 1:41:10

How fast were they responding to the leads?

SPEAKER_02 1:41:13

Within five minutes.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:14

Perfect. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:15

Um, yeah, I I remember hearing a statistic, and it might have even been on your podcast about like responding within five minutes. I think it was the um the car detailing. Yeah, he was good.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:25

He in he said he started when he was 13, so he started young. Yeah. And he said, Man, I uh went so long with like no systems and doing what you did. And he's like, Once we dialed it in, I can grew it to a multi-million dollar business.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:37

Yeah, speed to lead is like essential um for yeah, for even providing a good service. Like people just want good communication throughout the process, and it all starts with the when they first call.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:50

Do you have a referral system built in, like automated to where it if you know a customer you just service their house, um, they're happy. How do you get the like the Google review and then also or any other review or testimonial? And then also do like do they get an incentive to refer to their cousin or brother?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:09

We do have a really good Google review system, but we don't have a referral system. And you said that and like actually kind of gave me an idea that I want to write down. Yeah. Because I think like a huge opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:20

So even at like you don't have to run an ad, and they like if if you did my house and let's say there was a referral thing, and somebody came to my house that day and was like, Man, you're like, who cleaned out your garage? This is crazy. And I'd be like, Oh, you know what? Like these people had an if I knew I could get whatever uh you know cash back on my just my job I just did, or whatever it whatever the credit is, or you're gonna do something for them in the future. Like, I think that that's a lot of money probably left on the table, like it that you could automate that like you you just don't do anything, and then they get the text message, you know, we're so happy that you know you chose us as a customer, and then whatever the the incentive package that you want to get them, give them. But that would be that would be huge. I would add doubt to add some revenue without you guys having to work or anything. Yeah, and then it makes the sale easier when they already known that their buddy did it down the street or their brother did it. And so, like when you show up, you should close more sales off a referral, I would think, than just like a cold ad.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:19

So that will help too.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:20

Yeah, I like that idea. Um and the other thing is too with the model that we choose, I really want to make sure that technology and AI is a is a component of our advantage. And I do think that like our speed of being able to build systems is an advantage because of AI, which is like if we were to open privately owned locations, how our systems are, even from lead tracking to communication to being able to have a virtual office team, like AI is a part of how we're able to have the systems for that to work. But I don't I want to make sure I have the best way. And I wasn't sure if you have any vision of like what you see that we have here, if there is a direction that you see like potentially being the best one.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:08

I don't. I'm learning as I go too. Like on the AI front, yeah. I'm I I have a full-time guy now, so he's like kind of my my um eyes and ears of all this stuff. Like there's so much that's like happening so fast, and he's like deep into it, so I kind of leverage him.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:24

And what about so on the lead side, outside of the referral, when you don't close a job, just does it automatically follow back up with them? Yeah. Like I'm sure you have some type of system in that.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:34

Yeah, we have a good follow-up system. Our lead system is dialed. It's like so good.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:40

So what about repeat business? Is there do you do you have a lot of repeat business? Is there like an incentive to get them to come clean out another room? Maybe that's another thing. Um trying to like pull everything out of the customers you always have already have would be good too, because you don't have to do much.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:55

We have a newsletter that gr that is sent out to all of our customers. I mean, that's just like a good way of keeping uh rapport and the the idea of junk teens. Yeah, yeah. But we don't have specifically like a system that incentivizes people to call us back.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:13

And I'm I'm definitely not you you don't want to like go give away all your margin, but if s if they cleaned out a garage or whatever it was, maybe the AI or you can go through all your past jobs and look at your repeat customers and see after they cleaned out a room, like what they usually buy next, and then like use that information and then like send a text message a month later and be like, hey, you know, we can give you a whatever 10%, or we'll do extra junk removal. Well, maybe it's not a discount. Maybe it's like, hey, if you do your second um your storage shed, if that's what most people do, and like yeah, like you have that data, like start doing that. And maybe it's not like giving away money, maybe it's more like, hey, we'll do this extra work. And that way you never have to like 10% off, 20% off. Because I don't I don't like doing a lot of discount stuff anymore. Yeah, like I've learned nothing.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:02

Especially with like junk removal, it's really hard to have some sort of discounted service. And for anything like home service, I feel like discounting it's in a product business, it works good, but for a service business, it's it's just like so different.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:16

Giving away free money too, yeah. Giving away like margin, and then you don't want to train them to like always like wait for a discount.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:23

Like, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:24

So if you could create some sort of value on the follow-up, trying to get them to do another room, like, man, they did do a good job. I really need their wife's like complaining to them, like, you need to clean out this too. Like, the follow-up to that would be super helpful, I think. Just something. Yeah. Um, if you have the data from like how often a customer repeats or how long it takes them to repeat, and then maybe try to start targeting all your past customers with with what those customers normally did, and try to figure out how to a way to incentivize them. And it could be like we'll haul off one extra thing, or I don't know, just something simple, but it like still keeps you in front of them. And it's not they might not they may need it to do it anyways. So maybe that text message, like of you saying, Hey, we'll haul off two extra items, it could just be anything, and they'd be like, Oh, you know what? I do need to clean that room. It's more just like the like nudge to and like the slight incentive to like get them to go pull the trigger and then clean out their second room or clean out whatever they need to clean out. I think that would be helpful too.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:22

Yeah, I wrote that down actually. It's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:25

What about what about do you try uh I'm just thinking about the scaling thing too? Do a lot of people try to pay you in cash or you only take credit card?

SPEAKER_02 1:47:35

Um like we do collect cash, but we try to stay away from it because it becomes more difficult with accounting and that and whenever you're trying to if you're trying to scale to 100 million, having all those guys collect cash all over country doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:50

Like it's too tough. It it's also a temptation and it's it's not worth it.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:54

Yeah. And but the other thing is though, like our card processing fee definitely eats into the margin. Like we collect so much money through card, and we take checks too. I like collecting checks for bigger jobs, especially to avoid the fees. But I'm curious if there is like if there's a way around if you were to be scaling a company to that level, paying these like three percent fees for the processing.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:22

I think you always need to chop it for sure. And just like, and again, I've I haven't been on this side of the business in a long time. I'm just now getting back into it. Like I was d heavy on the e-com days, like as far as processing in retail stores, like I knew a lot about it. I don't know how far it's come and I don't know like what options are all out there. We are just now getting back into it. All my other companies have accounts receivable, it's not really a lot of credit card. So I haven't had to deal with it in a long time. So I'm like learning what's available today. And it it still seems similar to how it used to be, but um, I don't know if there's a better way. I need to, once we start doing a bunch of volume, I'm sure we're gonna be chipping away at it too. But I would just always be shopping. There's so many of those guys out there, and just trying to leverage your relationship and and get a better rate all the time. Have somebody look at it every year or every six months, like and like really try to make sure that you're saving the most amount of money as possible. There's always people that want your business, and yours is very low fraud risk, like e-comm stuff because you'll have more fraud. Like there's there's a lot of factors that go into it. Like you're at someone's house, like physically doing the work and then charging their card. Like, I feel like that fraud risk and like the chargeback risk is super low. So I feel like you could get a good, like a better rate than another competitive business or another business that does something that has more like chargeback rates or fraud. I feel like the bank will give you a better rate, or whoever the processor is.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:45

Yeah, that's it, that's a good point too.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:47

But always learn like things like that, you just it's like out of sight, out of mind, you just forget about it. But just have somebody in your office always like, hey, every six months, go to check this and shop this and see what else is out there for all your stuff that you have like on. Ongoing expense for.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:01

It's something that when you're making a lot of money, you forget I've been guilty of it. But if you always have somebody like, hey, every six months go check all our like we check, I check all my insurance prices all the time. We're always shopping, even on my cars. Like my assistant is always shopping because like every once in a while it'll just be another insurance company that just must need to write more business or whatever, and it'll be cheaper for the exact same insurance. And so like we switch. And then she's always like not always switching, but we switch like kind of often, like whenever there's a deal or they're trying to write our business. And same thing with our buildings, like we have to shop them a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:35

Um, because there's that's like one of our biggest costs now. So always just keep shopping your insurance, like all those costs. Like, I mean, you're already doing an amazing job at everything else, just like an extra thought. What's the hardest moment you had since you started the company? Like what stands out?

SPEAKER_02 1:50:50

Hardest moment for sure is working with my brother. Because when you mix family and business, sometimes it's hard to have a relationship with your family when money is in between every conversation. And I don't want to work with my brother forever, but I do want to do something big with junk teens with him if we can find this vision and make it work, which is the goal and the plan.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:21

And what's his role in the company today?

SPEAKER_02 1:51:24

My brother handles more of the day-to-day operations and the big problems that come up on a day-to-day, some more administrative stuff. Like he's the one negotiating the insurance policy, and um and then I handle more of the big picture vision, media, brand, culture. And like if we start getting into high-level executive hiring, that's definitely something I'll do. Because I'd I'd say I have a very strong people sense. Like I'm good at knowing if somebody is like like honest, reliable, um, has game or not, and can work. I'm good, I'm kind of good at seeing talk talkers versus non-talkers, and I'm only good at that because of how many different people we've ended up working with in all these years. And like I've hired and fired at at least like 10 solid people at this point. And like that to me, that sounds like a very low number, but each one of those situations and thinking through it has taught me so much about like what it really takes to have good people, what good people look like, and how to like hire better. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:38

Um What's something about running the business that I guess most people maybe wouldn't expect about it?

SPEAKER_02 1:52:44

It's that you you actually do have the freedom and ability to run the business, not let the business run you. And for a lot of years, we let the business run us. And like that's something that not a lot of people realize. It takes like for us, it took a big moment of my brother coming to college and us having to do some big things, or else our business was gonna fail because the whole business relied on my brother, and we we either had to build systems and and hire the right people, or literally fail the whole business. And that moment forced us to realize that we could actually run a business, not a million-dollar side hustle. And uh, I think a lot of people might get stuck in that trap of like you know, zero to seven figures and you and the business is running you, but I don't think a lot of people realize how much capability that they could have as an individual if they were really running the business. That's like a unique answer.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:42

A lot of founders get stuck in the same spot. I got stuck there. I think it's very common for a lot of reasons. But it took me 20 years to realize that. But yeah, um, if someone's listening to this right now who is like, you know how when you started like 15, 16, 17, what's the first thing you would tell them to do? Not necessarily in junk, just like yeah, it could be in it could be in life if you know they don't have to be going into junk removal. Just like your younger self.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:10

If it's the very beginning, it's that that that impossible dream life that you imagined is like actually possible. And the only thing that it takes is to just do it and get your mind so set on that vision or that destination and obsessed about it that everything in between just fills in there and it's like totally real. Like I used to I I don't know, I would hear these like ideas of making money in your sleep and that it's like get rich quick stuff, but like that's totally my reality now, but not in like a get rich quick way, yeah. Not in a get rich quick way, it's because we have a real team behind us and I've built systems and business and yeah, and we have a good business structure. So like if the guys are out from like 6 a.m. until 7 p.m. at night, and I wake up at 8 a.m. Well, those trucks are out making money, or if I'm out here filming this podcast right now, we have eight trucks out today that are all doing junk removal, and that used to literally seem completely impossible for me, like even like four years ago. And I used to work a job bagging groceries and never imagine myself being able to like make more than like that weekly paycheck, and it is 100% possible for people that don't know if it is possible for themselves. So that's what I would tell the very young version of myself. But then I think there was another big moment where I kind of transitioned from like building this thing for the money and then more for the passion and the impact of just building building something. And then I would also say like think deep on like the why behind what you're building and and just have a close relationship with that answer because that's like the ultimate thing that'll get you through the hardest times.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:08

Yeah, that's what we tried to work on in our workshop with the teens, like when we very first started, it's like trying to figure out the why is is super important because it does get hard and it's difficult and it's boring and it's and even if like the why for me was literally I want to have a hundred K so I can buy a Hellcat.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:25

And I was so set on that, and that's why I was like doing every side hustle I could to make a hundred K, but then I got there and then the why was way bigger from that. Yeah, it gets changed, yeah, and it changes. So, like the that's another important thing to realize is that that purpose, that vision, it doesn't always have to start with something big because I never knew I wanted to have a multi-million dollar junk removal company. Like when we first started, the biggest vision I saw was maybe having one or two dump trucks and my brother and I going out and making um enough to support a family, and that was the biggest vision I saw. And now we're gonna have to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:00

Okay, now you're asking me how how do I get to a hundred million?

SPEAKER_02 1:57:03

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that all changed along the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:07

So what's the one thing you wish you would have done differently?

SPEAKER_02 1:57:09

If you could think about when you started It's hard because like in every point along the way, I've done the best with what I've had. So it's hard to think if I'd done something differently. And if I had to answer, it would be like building think thinking about system building as early on as I could. Like, you know, we started using a CRM three years into the business, but if we started doing that like year one, you would have made more money. We we would have probably made 500k our first year instead of a hundred. We would have made a million our second year instead of our third. Yeah. And those like I could I think I could go to a new market and build a million dollar company in like one to two years with what I know now. And like it's it's really about doing um the other thing is though, like I wouldn't have thought of those things earlier on if I wasn't thinking as small as I was. So the vision changed along the way, and that's why it's like I don't know if I would necessarily change anything because like I could have added those systems in, but the vision never started with something that big.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:19

Yeah, I think mine was waiting too long to hire the right people. Just the to like I I was in my own way, and I wasn't like I was trying to do too many things and and not like that. That's probably what I would have done differently. Like, wish I looking back, it's like, man, that would have saved me a lot of number one, just stress and you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:39

Um I'm I'm actually curious too. So someone told me before that if you're doing over seven figures, you should have an assistant. You have an assistant. I'm curious if you think that I if it would be beneficial for me to have an assistant at this stage in the company.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:54

That is one of the things that I wish I would have heard a long time ago. I was I had a lot of rent houses, I was running my business, like it was stupid not to have one.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:04

There's maybe if you want to start, if you think your life would be more efficient with one, if you get bogged down doing like a lot of paperwork and like stuff that you shouldn't be doing, you need an assistant.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:16

Yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:17

And you can start out with like you already work with the five Philippines people, like they have great ones over there. I know people that run a whole Airbnb business with like a Philippine assistant.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:28

Like, I mean, legitimately, like that's it, and they work like one hour a week. You start there and it'll be very inexpensive, and you could see if you become more efficient, and then like the you know, at some point, do you need somebody in house, somebody with you all the time, or somebody that's like you know, in your physical location in your office, then maybe, but maybe you can do it with the person in the Philippines for like very little money, and it'll just make you be more efficient. And like if you can go do more things that will grow the company, then you need assistant. Like if you're in your head when you sit back and you're like, okay, if I wasn't doing these three things that don't provide much value, yeah, and I could pay her to do it or him, then and it would free up like these extra two hours a day or one hour a day, and I could go really like focus on like the things that you're trying to do, which is like establish a new market and like really go in all in on that and study it, then yeah, you it it would make sense to hire one. Like, I don't I don't know your day-to-day either, but yeah, at the level you're at, I wish I would have done it sooner for sure. Like that was definitely a big mistake. And when I say hire the right people, that's one of them. Like I could have like 10x my just my life just doing that without hiring a bunch of executives, like just that, because I did have I was still doing like a lot of stuff I shouldn't have been doing, and it was taking away my ability to grow the business. And so I think if you if you do that exercise and you just think about in your head, like if I freed up these things that are not moving the business forward, uh would it make sense to hire one? And then if it is and it's a Philippines person, it costs you a hundred dollars a week or less, then like do it, you know, do it. It's like, can I go make more than a hundred dollars a week if that's what it the true cost is or whatever the cost is? Like, I probably need to do that, you know?

SPEAKER_02 2:01:13

Yeah, yeah. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:16

Okay. Hey everyone, real quick, I just want to let you know this podcast is 100% independent. No ads, no sponsors, just real. If you're finding value in whatever we're doing here, the biggest help that you can give us is hitting subscribe and sharing this with someone who you think needs to hear it or someone that it will provide value to. That's how we continue to grow. And if you did that, I would really appreciate it. I, dude, I'm not the best manager. Okay. I realized that a long time ago. And I always have to have an operator that runs a business. And so our last businesses that we either started up or I bought into, there's always been an operator, or we've designated someone to be the operator and we let them earn inequity over over time. Yeah, so like just to make sure it's the right, yeah, just to make sure it's the right person. I mean, we we never give anybody equity up front anymore. You just don't know how that I mean sometimes you have a good idea, but no, that's a hundred percent. Yeah, it it's hard. And I just don't like doing the operations anyway. Yeah, I mean number one. Um I mean, if I had to, but I don't have to anymore. When I was younger, I did it because I had to. I didn't know any other way. And I waited way too long to hire good people. That was my problem. I just way too long of like trying to do too many things in myself. Yeah, and in that first company I told you about, I got capped out. Like I just didn't know enough to get me to, especially in the e-com world, like I just I needed to go hire like amazing people, and I probably could have got that company to 50, 70 million dollars, and I just didn't. And so, and I had retail stores, I had both. I you know, it was a slash of retail on e-com, but I I I didn't. I I thought it was just like whatever the limitation was, I just never did it, and so I ended up selling it.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:54

So, with you not being the best at management, what's been your strategy to fill that spot in building these companies?

SPEAKER_01 2:03:03

I hire a really good operator and you know, start there and then you know, build out the executive team after that.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:11

And and that so when you hire a really good operator, are you s normally spending a lot more up front, knowing that like the business will fill into that?

SPEAKER_01 2:03:19

Most of the time, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:21

Yeah, especially this point in my career, like I know it's a hundred percent necessary. And so I usually hire someone that has a bunch of relationships in that space. Like, if I find the right person, I will start a business around them sometimes. That's how some business ideas have started because I'm like, wow, man, like this person could really like if they went out on their own or you know, with me, like we could really go and grow a company. Maybe it's a different industry that I'm not from. That's a really good and so the right person is is definitely key.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:53

Yeah. I I'm like taking some notes here.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where I've been successful. Um, and then you know, the same thing with our our construction company I told you about, those relationships with the those, like all that stuff. He's been in the industry for 28 years. Even though my other partners are in construction, they sell building materials, they have so they bring a lot of value in that way. They would have never been able to do this without this one guy.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:20

And he has equity in the company. He's amazing. Like we we keep landing state contracts, we keep landing more stuff. Like he's just been doing it so long, has a relationship with everybody, and he's a good operator. So not only does he have the relationships, we are number one on all these leaderboards between one and two. Like they they always measure like performance. So it could be the amount of inspections you get, how fast you're building the house. It's a it's like a handful of everything. And not only does he have the relationships, we have the number one company as far as like as far as metrics are concerned. So we keep landing more contracts. We couldn't do without him. Uh just it it it wouldn't be it wouldn't be the same business. Like and so again, that business was started because of him technically, like gave him the confidence to start. So we brought him in early.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:09

And then So then like what skills do you think that you have that have been the biggest thing that's contributed to to the success you've built for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 2:05:18

Oh, I definitely think like the ability just to take action and execute on something, and then like never change directions. Like you always have to change a little bit based on market, based on things you figure out, but like I will never give up until it works. And so, you know, I I do what you're talking about. Okay, I need to get to 100 million, let me reverse engineer how I can get there. And then my path might be like this, but it but I'll ultimately get there almost every time is like whatever the goal that I set or whatever the target is. And the same thing with this, like I've been figuring out social media. I I've I didn't even have accounts two years ago. And so I've really been figuring out we've been, you know, and I've spent the money and the the time and what it takes to like eventually be super successful at it. And so hopefully, I mean not hopefully, at some point, I'll have a pretty large personal brand, I think. Oh, yeah. And just figuring out along the way. And I mean, we be the willingness to spend money too before I see immediate results, yeah, is pretty um, I've always been pretty good at even when I was younger and I didn't have a lot of money. I'm like investing every penny I had back into the business, back into a new idea. Like, like I I didn't really need much when I was your age. Like I can just live off. I I used to be able to eat off 20 hours a week. Like I didn't, I didn't have a family, I didn't do anything. And so I would be all in on something and I would take the profits and I would like okay, how can I figure out how to do even more? How can I figure out how to do even more? And so that was probably been my biggest skill. Um, I was the manager and was operating everything in my first company, and looking back, I just didn't know to go hire good people, you know, like also my partner at the time thought he could do everything himself, and everybody else was not good enough. So that kind of like kept us small and it kept my mindset like just being the guy that had to do everything for a long time for too long. I I think we could have scaled that company a lot bigger.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:16

Um, and I think a lot of times founders it's hard for them to give up. Like that's the thing they built, the control, the nobody can do it better than me. But it's not a sellable business if you're still they still rely off you for everything. It's just not. Yeah. So 100%.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:35

If you already have the systems and you already have good managers, like yeah, junk teens is at a place where I could literally be gone for months and the business would still run.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:44

So that's actually the right place to be. And that's the right place you need to be when you need to scale, right? Because if you really want to scale and you were doing all this other stuff, you wouldn't be able to go and do the marketing that you're trying to do. You're just like, hey, I'm uh I'm you're probably gonna be doing all the PR across the country. You're gonna be trying to, yeah. That like that's kind of what I I've already listening to you see happening is like you're almost gonna be the PR arm of the entire company and then like drive all the revenue, drive all the new locations, drive everything. Um exactly. I follow this account called Alpha School. Okay. Have you seen it on? It's called Future of Education. Yeah, yeah. McKenzie Price.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:24

Yeah, I think they either liked some of Junk Teams posts before they like follow us or something. I'm sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:29

Super cool business model. I I believe in my like that business model is probably the best one out there as far as like education is concerned. It's two hours of basics, right? Like reading, writing, math, and like just basic stuff that you learn in school. And the rest of the day is life skills. And I've seen that. They operate at Airbnb, they run a food truck, they learn communication, they speak. The reason I brought that up is because the co-founder of that company, all she does is go on every news station every week. PR, she's flying all over, she's speaking at events, like, but that is also they're able to now grow so fast where they're they got they're open in schools in every state, in every major city. And it's because of her like driving all of the revenue. Like if she would have just stayed as the operator and she's like managing teachers and stuff, it would have never got to the point. And there, I think there's a billionaire behind it and and other and there's also money, but yeah, yeah, without her going and like driving all that business, I I don't think that they would be where they're at.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:33

Yeah, that's like probably one of my biggest skills is just being able to be like maybe the face of the brand, good at storytelling and knowing super important, knowing the audience in any room, whether it's the customers for junk removal, the teenagers that are working at junk teens, the operators, the like whatever the the audiences. I'm just really good at listening to what they want and knowing how to shape the story to that audience. So like the entrepreneurial side, the customer side, the workers side. And I kind of have a the brand like shaped in all of those different directions. And um with scaling junk teens, that's a hundred percent like how I would see myself. Like I could imagine there being like junk teens locations across the US, and I'm maybe I'm flying around with a camera guy doing YouTube videos with like all the different junk teens, and then you know, like they're gonna be excited that Kirk is coming by with the camera and we're doing vlogs or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:32

I agree. And then I think it's also super important for if you are gonna scale to that size, for talent. So having every teenager in the country look up to you and look up to your company is like, oh man, that'd be cool to be a part of. Yeah, exactly. Like you can't grow without all those people bought in, you know, and if they already know who your brand is and you're like going all across the country, it's gonna be easier for you to get better talent that works for you and buys into your vision. So it's super important to uh to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:00

I was gonna add to that and say, like, I think the first or second year of starting junk teens, I was like 19 or 18 or something, and I realized very quickly I'm not gonna be a teen forever, but how can I keep an audience of teenagers and and keep the the teen aspect forever? And and social media was one of the biggest things I thought of, which is why I'm so big on it. Because if I want junk teens to stay that brand, like teenagers are gonna be on social media, and I need to have some sort of establishment there that will carry for those next generations of teenagers past me.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:38

Of course, and it only gets more and more, right? All the people now that are growing up right now in like the Logan Paul era. Yeah, they've they grew up on YouTube. They don't even know what they don't watch regular TV. Like from my era, is like I only know I I'm in the space now, but for most people that are my age, they only know like the Old movies and like the celebrities from back in the day, like the movie stars and just in the and what was on TV, and like that that was all that was available. Like, even my kid, seven years old, he's not gonna know what's on regular cable TV. Like, there's no way he's not gonna know anything that's on there, but he knows what's on YouTube, he knows what's popular, you know, in that little world. And now with the people growing up with AI and all this other stuff, it's only gonna get bigger. Social media is only gonna get bigger, and the traditional media is like only gonna decrease. Which or have less and less impact because that's their their uh age group that that watches that media is like dying off and then slowly becoming older and then getting out of touch with what and all the new kids are coming up with social media. Hate even calling it social media now because it's really media. Yeah, like even the president used it to get elected. Like he went on every podcast in the country, yeah. Which I thought was a insanely smart move. But he said it was because of his son, Barron. He goes, Yeah, I don't know. Barron told me to do all this, and he really knows this space. Like I think he told Rogan that when he was on a Rogan. So it's kind of cool. It's like use he he realized that and used it to his advantage. And I think that that was a huge reason. I think that was a really big reason people started like really uh knowing who he was and then what his policies were, and then the other side didn't do any of it. They never went on any of them. And so I just I I think it's like that is media now. It's not like social media, like the the all podcaster media, the um the influencers, I guess you would say, on YouTube, like that's all media. Like those are they're getting more views than CNN. And I mean, what you know, one show, one episode on YouTube of somebody's podcast or something gets more 10 times more views than like a CNN uh media, traditional media run or anything else on traditional media, 60 minutes or something like that. It's it's the viewership. When you like look at the viewership, it's not that much.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:55

Yeah, and like people can choose the media that they consume now. Like that change wasn't even like more than 15, 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:04

I mean, you could flip on the TV station and kind of put through, but you don't really know outside of those cable channels, like that's all you had.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:10

Exactly. And like that change is that's huge for culture and and huge for like society and consumption and and technology has played a big role in that. And I've even seen that like the technology that we use now even shapes music. And like I I really like music. It's like my way, it's my one of my passions, hobbies, ways to get away from business. Um, not get away from it, but like be able to be a hundred percent me with no external factors is through music. And I've even seen how like rap music, for example, uses more like distorted bass because people are listening to music through their phones because they're scrolling on short form social media and you can hear the distorted bass sounds easier through an iPhone.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:59

And like that's super interesting because I didn't I was wondering, uh you know, when you play it in your car sometimes, like it doesn't sound good.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:07

Exactly. And that's because like now, because of technology, people are consuming uh music more through their phones because of the social media, and that's shaping how like how we we have a taste for music and like technology, it's doing that through music, but even just like the way we consume regular videos, like people would used to read the newspaper as their media consumption. Now it's completely different. And and I grew up with like Nickelodeon TV show cartoons, and that's what I like signed up for, and that's who I talked about with my friends. But now kids are talking about YouTubers like uh like Stefano Narducci or like maybe junk teens. So I think that's really cool to see that that shift because it's I think it's like bigger than than we've had for like maybe 50 hundred years in the US, like the innovation and and how like people are consuming media it is it blows my mind and I want to be a part of it somehow.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:06

Where can people follow you?

SPEAKER_02 2:16:08

Yeah, so for me personally, I think you can just throw all these links in the description here.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:15

We will.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:16

But I am personally most active on my personal Instagram account, and junk teens gets like you know, minimum 10 DMs a day, and I I'm not able to see all those, but if people DM me personally on Instagram, I'll see it for sure. Um but if they want to see more of like the day-to-day life stuff, like YouTube, I'm posting vlogs on junk teens pretty soon coming up.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:40

YouTube and Instagram?

SPEAKER_02 2:16:44

Like YouTube for junk teens, but also I don't know if I told you this, but I also have my own podcast that I started a few months ago.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:52

Oh sweet, I know I didn't know.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:53

Yeah, my first guest was Stefano Narducci, he owns a snow plowing business, home service guy. And my plan with that is to do 15 episodes and really take a step back and evaluate like was this worth it for me? And I just genuinely enjoy the whole process from like setting up the camera gear, meeting different guests. Sometimes I fly out, some people come to me. I love every step of the process. And if you want to like see more of the people that are in my network in my life, you can look up Kirk McKinney on YouTube and my podcast is there. And I've only posted two episodes right now, but I have seven that are uploaded to YouTube and I'm posting weekly at this point.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:35

Sweet.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:36

So that's like another one. I'd say the podcast and my personal Instagram are the two where you could find me the most, and then anything junk teens is what I'm building.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:45

Sweet, man. Well, I think it was super valuable conversation for sure for anybody that's listening that wants to get into a home service business. Yeah, yeah. And it's been it's incredible. Remind people how old you are, because I don't even know if you said that.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:00

Yeah, I'm 22. My brother's 20.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:02

Yeah. Super incredible. Like you built a really strong, like solid business with no debt. Like it's really, really hard to do. In college.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:12

In high school, yeah, part-time, right? Like everybody was literally part-time.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:16

Part-time built a five million dollar business with no debt, like part-time.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:20

So well, I mean, it you could look from the outside and it seems part-time, but like school was not my number one priority. I didn't have the best grades, so I was like, You were still still attending.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:30

Yeah, so that's still time out of the day that you weren't spending on the business. This is part-time, it's part-time.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:35

The mental focus was the biggest one, though. Like having my head in that space when I should be on the business, like, yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:42

So goes to show you he started when he was 15.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:46

Yeah, I was yeah, entrepreneurial journey 15, junk removal started at 17. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:52

All right, man. Thanks for coming on.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:54

Of course. Thanks, Sean. Awesome.