Dumpsters and Digital Marketing

Business brain, episode 520 for Wednesday, January 31, 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take an idea or three, we dissect it, we analyze it, we tweak it, we use it to tune our business brains collectively every single time we get together. Sponsors for this episode include squared away@go squared away.com contact where you can find out how to employ highly educated military spouses as your remote executive assistants. And also gusto.com businessbrain to get three months of payroll, benefits, admin, and more. Totally free. We'll talk more in depth about those in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, as usual, I'm Dave Hamilton, and out.

In Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. Dave, I'm excited. We have a guest today. Getting back into the. They're not really interviews. They're more just like business talks. Discussions. Right on the casual.

We're tuning our business brains, man. Yeah, yeah.

And I'm, I'm really happy to welcome Bodhi Gallo. I met Bod on the X platform. Twitter. His. His account is I Rent Dumpsters. Oh. But what it, what really got me motivated to reach out and ask Bod to come on the show is there's a lot more to this guy than. Than his Twitter handle would. Would describe. So, Bod, thanks for coming on the show today.

Thank you for having me, guys.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's cool. So I've been following your content for a while. I really like it. You're describing what's going on with this dumpster rental business. And I, I love the, you know, early morning post, dropped off seven dumpsters, 6,300 bucks today. I love that. Real time building motivation. But what pushed me over the top was you're. You also own a digital marketing business. And if I'm describing that right. And so I. Walk me through what your business is and how these two companies interact with each other, how, where, how they started.

Okay. I'll tell you guys from the start of everything. I was in college, like 18 years old. I made a finance blog called Financial Freedom 101 blog blog. Our slogan was to inform the young investor the importance on investing in your future. Investing in stocks, mutual funds, anything like that. I made up.

You know, the normal stuff that college kids.

Normal stuff. Yeah, yeah. Because I'm wired differently.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's. It's great. Yeah.

I made a post about credit cards, the best credit cards for young college adults, college students. Without knowing I was writing out an SEO formatted Blog post. I was getting a ton of referrals on there. Nice credit card on my credit cards. I was like making $50 a week just from referrals. I was like, what the hell is this? Like, what am I doing here? I got an internship that summer with a company called Active International for learning SEO. When I worked for Active International. They're a pretty big media brand around the country. They work with companies like Firehouse Subs and Kroger. So I was working under Firehouse Subs and Kroger learning local SEO, how to place commercials, just Google Ads, stuff like that. I did that for two summers. The following summer, I worked for Benjamin Moore and Company. The paint company.

Oh, yeah.

When I worked for Benjamin Moore, I was in their corporate office in Monvale, New Jersey, and I was actually working under one of the marketing managers of 10 of their stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. I was about to graduate college. I was going to work for a company called Financial Times, the blogging company. But my uncle came to me and was like, this dumpster rental business for sale. You should definitely look into buying it. My, me and my cousin were on the same college lacrosse team. We played Division 2 lacrosse together. And we would just. We would be on the field at 6 o' clock in the morning watching trucks go by. And we were like, damn, we could be out there making money, but we're running miles right now for no reason. So it was like April of my senior year, had a job lined up, and they kept coming to me with business ideas. They knew I was business minded. They knew about my marketing background. So they came to me, they said, a landscaping company. I was like, no, thank you. A pool company. No, thank you. But they said, dumpster rental company. And I was like, I gotta take advantage of it. So we bought one dumpster and 20 trucks. And this guy who was like 65 years old, he had no website, no Facebook, no Google, my business profile, absolutely nothing. And I was able to build all that up on the back end like a month before we bought the business. And then we bought the business in May. Once we bought the business in May, we were off running. We had to add 10 dumpsters to the fleet immediately. So we went from 20 to 30.

Okay, so you bought. You said you bought one dumpster and 10 trucks. You bought 10, 10 dumpsters?

I bought one truck and 20 dumpsters.

One truck and 20 dumpsters. Okay. Yeah, that's what I figured you meant. Yeah.

From this guy who was selling his business. The New York Waste Management Market's a little hard to get into. So we had.

Yeah, yeah.

So we had.

I used to live in the town where the Galante family was. So I of course very aware of.

You know about the Trashers.

I know about the Danbury. I used to go to Trashers games. I lived there while that was happening. Yeah, it's fascinating.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

So it's tough to get in. We had this big opportunity. We were like, we have to take this chance. We bought into the business and then now we have two trucks and 50 dumpsters and I'm dominating the whole market for just local search.

And so basically somebody calls you and says, hey, we need. We're doing a project or whatever. Consumers or businesses, you drop a dumpster, they keep it for a certain period of time and then you guys come get it.

Is that exactly. I keep it as simple as possible. We're more for the homeowner. I only have five. I mean I five. I only have 10, 15 and 20 yard dumpsters. I don't have the 30 yard dumpsters because my target market is homeowners and small time contractors. Those are my bread and butter people. They're easy to handle, easy to deal with.

Better margins maybe.

Better. Way better margins. And there's a company called Been There Dump that they're like the 1-800-God junk of the dump dumpster rental space. And I base my business around them. I don't really do junk removal jobs anymore unless it's like a big time job.

Sure, but.

But otherwise, like, I just stick to dumpster rentals. That's my bread and butter. It's a volume game. And if I'm able to get the volume, then the profits are huge.

Yeah, that's so cool. Okay, so then, so that's the. The dumpster business and then the digital marketing aspect of it and like these maps. I was just talking about you before we went live. You know, talk to me about that. Walk us through how that works and how you interact with both of them.

So after I was able to hire my second driver, I was just doing office work on the back end and I was so bored and I was like, I need something to do with my life. Like, I just wasn't fulfilled at all. I started doing marketing. Someone was opening up a cannabis dispensary in my county and they were like, I'm looking for a marketer. Can anyone do this? I was like, sure, I'll take this on. And then it ended up he really couldn't pay me the right amount of money. And I was like, I gotta do this myself. Like I can help other service based businesses. I gotta do this myself. So I started my, I started Stryker Digital. My partner Andy, we met in a stock group chat like seven years ago. He's an HTML coder and I'm a local SEO guy. We were like, we could just collab on this for sure and grow it. And what we do is we help service based businesses increase their goal. Like their Google rankings.

Nice.

Fascinating.

So yep, that's us. That's Andy.

That's killer.

For those of you who aren't watching the video, we're showing the website, but you can go there, we'll link it all from BusinessBrain Show. So yep, yep.

And all our, all our, like, all our websites are custom coded. We don't really use WordPress. We're starting to use WordPress now. But all our websites are all custom coded, which makes us different than most competitors because most of the time your local service businesses do not have coded websites.

Yeah. Yeah, that's so cool.

That makes sense.

And so, okay, and like these maps that you show up on your account, you got to go check these out after we're done here. So don't explain to me what that is. Let's just pretend I don't know anything about SEO, which would be the truth. So walk me through it.

So what those maps are is like when you guys are searching for, let's say restaurants near me or plumber near me, locksmith near me, you go into your goo, go into Google usually to search for something like that. And what those maps are is it shows what your keyword ranks within a specific area on Google Maps. So if you're searching something like dumpster rental near me, that map, like the circle in that map will show where you're ranking for that around your county and your search results.

Really? So just publishing it on X helps feed that? Is that.

No, not publishing on. Okay, I just show my. Yeah, I show my clients on X. I gotcha. I always have to mute out like who their company is or whatnot. But I show my. I show my clients on X. And I just show like how I get other businesses ranking from my local SEO strategies.

Got it.

And a lot of my strategy has been built out from work. I work with a lot of other SEOs.

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Awesome.

All right, so I'm, I'm curious because like Shannon said, we're, we're idiots at SEO here. So like, I would love to learn some actionable tips that we can use and of course that our listeners can use to get our, you know, maybe just to like, incrementally help ourselves. So like, when you come to somebody. Bodhi. What, like where, where, where would you start?

So some basic tips I would have is to build a Google My business profile. In that profile, you could have a products page and a services page and only having about like five products, keeping some people think the more the better. But actually you can edit your Google my business profile to only have five products within the profile itself.

Got it.

Another simple tip is to have a website. But you can't just have like a plain website, like a business card. You should have a website with at least five regular pages and then having service area pages on the back end. So for example, if you're going to have a website for a dumpster rental company in New York City, you'll have a page for the Bronx borough, for Manhattan, for Queens, for Staten Island. And then on the back end of all those pages, you'll have a 10 yard dumpster rental, Staten Island, 10 yard dumpster rental, Manhattan, 10 yard dumpster rental, the Bronx, stuff like that.

So you've got landing pages for, for Google to index. Yes, for when people are searching for those specific things you've got, you're not just trying to have one page serve as everything.

Yep. Your website should pretty much be like a book. And then we actually embed a Google map on the bottom of every single service page. So I'll have a single Google map for let's say Staten island, the dumpster rental.

Sure.

I have a Google map. That's from your, that's from your Google my business profile. You're able to take the map and embed it on the bottom of the service area page.

And this would be a little tip. Yeah. And this like what you just shared is obviously there's some specifics for. Yes, you know, local business, businesses serving local, you Know areas like, like a dumpster rental business would. But you're. The idea of having this website that reads like a book applies to everything, I would think.

Applies to everything. A lot of pages we build aren't even. Like, our consumers couldn't even see these pages. It's more for Google to index.

You got it. Got it. Cool. Okay. And when you, when you built that credit card page that you sort of stumbled into this skill set that you, it turns out you have and all of that, what were some of the key elements of. Of that page that really helped it and helped you learn?

So, yeah, that's a little different than the se. Than local SEO.

Right.

That. That type of SEO I just stumbled upon because I was doing like some basic research on SEO, like for organic. For my credit card post.

Yeah.

So I just did some linking to, like, other websites on that post. Something like Investopedia. So just internal linking between sites, external.

Links, like outbound links to other sites.

Outbound links.

And that actually helped your SEO by having outbound links?

Yes, And I just discovered that. And I, I still get paid from that post today. And like, I've downgraded my blog a lot since then. Like, I really don't post on it at all anymore. My last post was about like a quarterly, quarterly report on my own self.

Right, right. Yeah, I saw that there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't really have the passion like I used to for that kind of stuff.

Oh, you're doing other things.

Yeah, I'm more about business now than like finance like that. My finances are all just on autopilot.

Yep.

But I'd like, I just came across that and I was like, wow, I gotta, like, do something about this. Like, I enjoy writing and I enjoy marketing, so I'd rather be on the back end where, like, I'm not really on social media in real life. I'm not on Instagram, I'm not. I'm only really on X. And I'm on Facebook from like 2009 or something. So.

So let's talk about being on X, because I, you know, you do put out a regular, pretty regular stream of content, talking about your business building in public, that it. And has that been successful for you? Driving or, you know, getting contacts and people reaching out to you to build, well, one or both of their businesses.

Yes. It's really just diversified my network. Like, I feel like I could go to any state in the country pretty much, and I'll know someone that does some type of service. So, like, I'm looking to get into like long term rentals down in like the north or South Carolina and me and my partner, what we want to do is I want to buy somewhere where I know I have some connection through X or my marketing business where like I know I have someone there I could trust that already, trust me, you know. So that's something like I look forward to having. Just because of my network I've built on X itself.

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. I mean I know there's some people, you know, selling products on X or selling even like sponsorships or exposure via their, the followings that they've already built on X. But I think that's not a great plan for someone getting into X. I think the way to create value for yourself and others there is what you just described, that whole network.

Yeah, the network effect is insane with X. I can't believe the amount of people I've met through there.

Yeah, yeah. Well here we are, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's amazing and it's a, it's a great, you know, I look at it like a flywheel for your, all your ventures and things you have going on and connecting in like a master class of who do I want to talk to about rentals in this area? Is it this guy or that guy? And you've interacted with them like you said you've already built some credibility. So that's really cool.

Yeah, the best part is just like being able to talk to guys that like, like we're like at 24, a lot of my friends all work in corporate America. We're like, I don't, there's nothing wrong with that but like I don't have that many people to talk to about business like what I'm doing day to day.

That's why we do this, really why.

We started this show.

X has really opened up that up for me because like I can make a phone call at any time of day now. Like I'm all in group chats on X Slack channels just from like I can now because my friends are always tired of me talking business. All you do is talk about yourself and I'm like there's nothing else, there's nothing else I do in my life. You know, like I love running businesses. Like that's what I'm passionate about. That's why I always talk about it. So X has really opened up that window for me.

No, that's it, that's it. Like Shannon said, that's why we started this show. And I mean we started this show because Shannon and I were having these kinds of conversations together frequently because it's hard to find in your local neighborhood. It's hard to find peers that are actually peers in this way. Right. You can find peers who have kids of the same age or, you know, in other ways. But when it comes to, like, what do you do for work? Well, I run businesses. Well, what's that mean? Well, let me tell you. And then you tell people about all the language, all the things you do, and they think you're crazy or they think you're a flake or, you know, all of those things are they sick of. You're talking about yourself. It's like, well, yeah, but like, you guys are talking about, you know, your. Your pension plan and, like, negotiating for a new job or whatever. And it's like, I don't do that. I do different things.

Yeah, exactly. I just can't pay attention to it. It's. It's kind of a downside of being your own business owner.

But, like, it is. Yeah.

If there was no such thing as X, like, I'd be a lonely human.

Yeah, right.

It is. And it is that entrepreneurship is, you know, it can be really lonely. And so building up that network and we've talked about it in all different ways over time and. And I just got back into X, you know, five or six months ago, and it is definitely that support group and people there that don't think every idea is crazy. Actually, it's like the opposite. Some of these guys, you gotta be like, oh, man, don't let me start another business today, you know?

Yeah, that's.

My partner keeps me in check. My partner Andy, keeps me in check. He's like, don't get shiny object syndrome. Let's focus on one thing. Scale it to a million dollars, and then once we do that, we can look till something else.

Yeah, that's. That's the way to do it. That's really.

Because I'm a scatterbrain. I love doing a million things like me. It's. It's very important for me to, like, stay on track, because if I can stay on track and give something 100 effort, I know I'll be able to dominate at it.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah.

Well, Bodhi, anything else you want to touch on before we jump off here?

Nothing much. Thank you for having me, guys.

Yeah, man, it's a great story. I go up on X, I rent dumpsters, and we'll link it in the show notes at Businessbrain show and Is.

That a good place for people to find you? Bodhi is on exit. I rent dumpsters. Okay, we'll make sure that's linked in the show notes. Yeah, for sure.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you. Thanks everybody for hanging out with us. Thanks for checking out our sponsors. Of course. Gusto.com businessbrain go squared away.com contact make sure you check out x.com irent dumpsters. Keep living that charmed life. Thanks, Bodhi. And we'll see you all on Friday.