Lee Godbold - Junk Removal Authority

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom Podcast. We have Lee Godbold on the podcast with us today. Uh, Lee's the CEO of Junk Removal Authority, has been at that company for 8 years. He also the— he's also the president of Specialty Truck Bodies and a couple of other companies, NTH Zone, uh, Junk Doctors as well, uh, up in Mooresville, North Carolina, of all places, rocking the, the cowboy hat and has the best tan I had on this podcast. So Lee, welcome to the podcast. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you've been up to.

Yeah, so, uh, Junk Doctors was the first company that I started. I still own it. It's a junk removal business in North Carolina in 3 markets. Um, it does several million dollars a year, and we started that in 2011, 2012 area. Um, I got into it actually just with a pickup truck and trailer, so very much just kind of as basic as you can be. I had an old pickup truck And my boss at the time that I was working for basically loaned me a trailer, and I started, uh, started kind of hauling junk. At that time, it was just Craigslist ads, and then we found Google Ads probably about a year or so in. And that was back when Google Ads was pretty cheap and very profitable because nobody was really doing it. That kind of took off, and, you know, had a million-dollar-a-year business after about 3, 4 years, somewhere in that range. I thought about franchising, which has been a pretty typical path with the junk removal industry, but instead decided to, hey, offer something a little different. I've always been somebody trying to, for better or worse, trying to find it, kind of find something that's a little unique. So I said, hey, let's take the good things about franchising, which is the initial setup, uh, help on the branding, help on operations, and some of the marketing support, and, um, let's offer that to people without some of the restrictions and without some of the ongoing royalties. So we set up a company that does just that. So we help people start into the junk removal business And then we have some ongoing services around digital marketing. Now we're very heavy into automation with AI voice agents and stuff like that. And then, uh, the next thing, especially truck bodies, is still within the same niche. So we actually build the body that goes on to the vehicle, the cabin, what's called the cabin chassis, and we ship those throughout the country for junk removal, uh, customers. So we've, we've shipped those trucks, I believe, to 46 of the 50 states. It might be 47 now. I know we haven't done Alaska. North Dakota, South Dakota. I don't believe we've done one in Montana. So I think we've done— we have done Hawaii. So we've done 46 of the 50 states.

And how did you start out so entrepreneurial? I can't read like a normal job experience in you. Like, what was your childhood like? Who are your parents? How did you get started in that game?

Yeah, so if you look back, if I kind of look back at my life, you know, the largest influence I had was actually aviation. So my dad is just— he's a private pilot, so he just enjoyed flying. And Dad had a plane from about the time I was— I think it was about 10 years old, 9 or 10. But even prior to that, we'd go out to the airport. And I talk about a plane, this is, you know, propeller-driven airplane. And the one he had was— it was a 2-seater. He still owns it today. It was a lot of fun just to go up and fly around. Dad worked for IBM. Uh, he taught me a lot of hard work. If you're going to do something, do it right. He's a bit of a perfectionist, almost to a fault in certain ways. Um, and I'm certainly not a perfectionist in terms of— I won't, uh, I'll, I'll constantly work towards something, but at the same time, if I get 80% of the way there, you know, that's, that's kind of good enough. And we'll continue to strive for perfection, but we'll kind of move on. But with aviation, it exposed me to other business owners, and the guys that had the big expensive airplanes and stuff like that tend to be business owners. So I'm kind of putting 2 and 2 together here. And I knew I loved to fly. I loved the freedom that aviation gave me. And, uh, I would hang around those guys and they would teach me stuff sort of along the way. So I never really had what I would call necessarily a, uh, you know, a big corporate job or anything like that. You know, I started in high school. I started working at a roller skating rink. I did that for 6 years. I learned a lot from my boss there. He, um, uh, he actually has since started— they sold the roller rink after 20-some years. He since started a towing company. that's been successful. He's, he's building up trucks and that kind of stuff. So I learned customer service and I learned entrepreneurship and, um, that sort of things kind of from him. And, you know, I just— I would start businesses along the way and some would succeed, some would fail. And then I kind of hit on this niche of junk removal, and I've stayed relatively disciplined in that ever since we, uh, kind of hit on that.

And you started early, right? Like, I mean, you're still Young. You're what, you're 36? Um, I'm 32. Like, it seems you had lots of success like early, right? Like most of your peers, they're not multimillionaires at that age. Um, what made you that way? And, uh, when you talk to people that you grew up with?

Yeah, I mean, I go back to a lot of the people that I— it's interesting, a lot of the people I hung around in aviation, there were some younger friends that I had, but a lot of them were older. So I think I always kind of had a A work mindset from the beginning, because simply because that was sort of what I was exposed to. Um, you know, I didn't do a lot of sports later on. I did early on, but not later on. It was all kind of aviation. Eventually I got into auto racing, which I believe you're into cars and all too. But, um, so I think I was just exposed to that along the way. So even I might have been 20, 21 years old when I started Junk Doctors, but I guess I felt a lot more experienced than that because I've been talking business since I was 10 years old with, you know, the people that I But do you, if you analyze like the skills in you, right?

Is it grit? Is it the ability to build systems, to identify opportunities? Like what's, if you'd be a baseball scorecard, what would be your top specialties?

Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely a visionary. So that came natural to me. It's easy for me to dream and then I'll get started quick. Sometimes I'll get started too fast. At least that used to be the case. Now, more recently, I've become more disciplined with that, but I'd start a lot of things and we'd fail, and then occasionally some would hit, which is relatively common. So I'm definitely a visionary. I learned to be a good systems guy and operator, and AI has allowed that to become even better because now I've got an entire panel of some of the different AI models and personalities and bounce things off, and it allows me to see some different angles and ways of doing things that was a little more difficult in the past, so that's helped. Um, I, I've definitely mentioned grit. You know, I've— we've had, uh, lots of disappointments over the years, and I just kind of roll my sleeves up and get back to it. You know, you just— this whole thing, you're gonna have some days that are bad, and you just have to realize that the bad times obviously will pass. And then the other thing is the good times. So it's very easy as an entrepreneur, and one of the places that I've struggled with sometimes as well, get a lot of success And maybe I'll let off the gas a little bit. When you have the most success, that's when you got to push on that gas further. You have to find another gear. You need to ride that momentum. Otherwise, you'll spend a year or two kind of rebuilding things, which I've had to do twice. We're just kind of coming out of a rebuilding phase, and we come back stronger. But if we're smart, we avoid that all the way, and we get momentum, and we don't stop. We find another gear, and we find a way to, to keep moving forward.

And you have a couple of companies by then. How do you make sure to find these lieutenants that can take these companies from 80% to 99%?

Yeah, so if you look at specialty truck bodies, I have no experience at all in manufacturing. So I knew I could market and sell a truck body, and I also knew from our experience what I wanted on it. But I knew, hey, I've got to find somebody that knows how to build trucks, knows how to set up manufacturing systems and manage manufacturing, uh, team members, because it's completely different from the home service space with junk removal, especially junk removal, which is a very simple industry with younger team members. And it's way different than digital marketing. So I knew that was outside of my wheelhouse. So I found a guy, and he actually lived in my neighborhood. Um, our dogs are actually the reason that we, uh, we kind of came together. I had an Australian Shepherd, recently had to put him down about a year ago, and he has a German Shepherd. And anyway, um, the 2 dogs kind of wound up running up to each other in, in the neighborhood, and I started talking with him. And over 6 months, we just had conversations, and I'd let him know, hey, I was thinking of building these truck bodies and that kind of stuff. And his entire career was in the manufacturing space. Uh, he is an engineer. So he understood how to build systems and how to build templates or fixtures for some of the things that we wanted to do on these bodies. And of course, I knew what I wanted in terms of a body. So we worked out a deal, and it was a partner— it is a partnership. And he handles the manufacturing side, I handle the marketing and lead gen sales side and managing the people on that end. And he manages the shop and makes sure it runs well. And that was just a really good fit. So That one was pretty obvious. I mean, it was, hey, look at what I'm weak at and let's find somebody that's strong there. Now, on the marketing side of things, I'm pretty good at marketing. I understand a lot of the things on marketing. So then it's at that point, hey, what am I most interested in doing and what am I best at doing? And then it's like, all right, the things that are not right at the top of that list, I've got to kind of offboard, which Dan Martell with Buy Back Your Time does the best job possible of explaining that concept. So instead of me going into it, just read that book. Um, and I, I, you know, I just, I kind of followed that formula and I found good people, and then they in turn found good people, and we've got a really good, good system going on now.

And the main cash cow is still, uh, Junk Doctors, correct?

Junk Doctors, Junk Doctors is basically passive for me now. So no, it's not the, the largest earner. It's really, it's kind of split between STB and Uh, Junk Removal Authority, and that'll vary some. Some, some years, uh, STV will be better, some years JRA will be better. Junk Doctors just kicks off consistent income, and I really— I mean, you're talking I might work maybe 2 to somewhere between 2 to 5 hours a month on that. And it's basically just from like an investor standpoint. It's, hey, looking at the trucks we have, all right, this is, you know, we need to purchase trucks here, here, here for the capacity. Let's sell these, these assets. How are we, you know, do we have enough people? How are the people doing? So it's basically just kind of looking at numbers and talking with my partner in that company. So before this call, we were talking about employee stock ownership plans. I did have a guy— I guess I have done this because I had a guy that came in and started right off the bat from me, and over time he's earned some equity ownership in Junk Doctors. Runs it well. He's been running it basically since day one— or not since day one, but he's been with me since day one. And since I started JRA in 2018, he's just ran that business really, really well. And again, it's, it's a good income generator for me, and it's, uh, it's grown some. Uh, the last few years have been down a little bit. Now we're kind of back up on the upswing this year, but it's, it's still a great, uh, great company.

Tell me about the franchise model as well. What's your ICP for the, the best potential franchisee ever, and why go to that model and not scale it and raise capital and build the locations yourself?

So you're asking what do you feel like is the best model of franchise out there?

Yeah, yeah. And the first question was, uh, who's your ideal, um, franchisee persona?

You know, if somebody's going to buy into a franchise, it's probably less of a visionary, certainly less of a visionary, and more of an operator. It's a give them a system and they'll sit there and they'll follow that system day after day, year after year. And it's somebody that generally needs a little bit of patience too. Um, the first— when you're starting something like a home service company or your typical franchise, a lot of franchises, there's a like a 2-year time frame where you make very little money typically. Now there could be some exceptions to that. If you go out and you buy into a Chick-fil-A day one, you know, you've got massive name recognition, massive brand recognition. So it's just a matter of letting people know that Chick-fil-A is in the area and, you know, maybe the income comes a little bit quicker. But if you're starting Uh, junk removal franchise in an area that is, uh, that you don't really have that name or brand recognition, the main thing you're buying in is kind of the system to build that up in your area. You've got a few years where you're just gonna have to kind of blindly follow the system and just trust that it's going to work. And then, you know, every quarter, every 6 months, you'll get a little validation here and there. And, uh, that, that's going to be really important. It's kind of like the guy that just, you know, we mentioned the gym before this call, the guy that just shows up at the gym and tracks what he's doing and tries to get a little better every week, um, that's, that's the guy that's going to do well in a franchise system. I, I would not be a great franchise, a franchisee, because I go in too many different directions and I'm too much of a visionary.

You know, there's all these visionaries that never make any money. Like, what's different with you? Did you add it like grit to that? Because you must have some operational acumen Because the extreme case of, um, you know, the ADHD founder, it's, it's more ADHD than vision, right? It's just like everywhere at the same time. And I suffer from that to some degree, right? But I think I can back it up with grit and execute. And but my ideas are also very fucking good, you know? Like, I've, I've had like so, so much, uh, business experience testing out, uh, products to specific, um, customer personas throughout the years that anytime I have something, I know it's, it's probably probably gold, right? And someone should execute on it. So tell me a bit more about, yeah, your ability to follow up on these ideas and/or to have, um, yeah, people execute on these ideas.

Well, you know, the first thing— and this sounds like I'm not necessarily answering your question— but the first thing that I've always kept first is, is what's the most important thing in business is your customers. So my whole deal was, hey, we always Take care of the customers. Now part of that is taking care of the team, because if you take care of the team, the team takes care of you know of your customers. So I would be good enough, and when I'm dedicated to something, a lot of it even grit, just outwork, work hard. I mean, saying you outwork another entrepreneur is hard to say because there's entrepreneurs out there that will literally work as much as you humanly can. So there's definitely something else other than that, but I would definitely put in the work. And it's hard to get me down. Um, I'm a very even-keeled person. So even the excitement stuff now, like sometimes my wife, or, uh, when I was racing here recently, you know, win, and man, people are like, man, don't you get more excited? I was like, no, because I'm kind of looking, looking toward the next thing. I'm looking at what's coming next. And I've learned, hey, if you get too excited, that's when you kind of get knocked down. So you just got to have this even-keeled approach, man. You'll hear me talk about that a lot.

Very much.

big on, on that because I feel like that's what keeps you consistently focused. So, and then operationally, I'd make some mistakes, but it was always, hey, we're trying to do better for the customers. And in doing that, there were things on the back end. You got to make sure your billing's right. You got to make sure you're billing everybody you're supposed to be billing. You need to make sure you're profitable because you can't— if you're not making money, there's no way you can serve your customers and your employees and your team. So I would always just kind of have that be my northern star. That I was sort of chasing. And there was some chaos along the way. And I guess part of it is, is you just got to accept some of that. You have to realize that unless you're extremely well capitalized, and even then a lot of times you don't know exactly where to put it if you're well, too well capitalized. But you got to realize there's going to be some chaos and you just have to be willing to survive in that. There's going to be parts of your company that drives you crazy because you're like, man, I want to fix this. But what's the most important few things I need to work on now? That's going to push the company forward, that's going to take care of my customers and take care of my team. And that's what you focus on. And eventually you get to some of those other stuff, or you get profitable enough that you can finally hire somebody to say, hey, you handle this, report these numbers back to me.

I guess another answer I can potentially sense in yourself, certainly in myself, right, is that I'm very good at sales, right? So anytime I have an idea, I'm immediately gonna go to market and make money, right, and generate water and then feed everyone, right? So I'm a good hunter. Um, what sales process do you have for your various companies? Uh, could focus on NTH and, uh, Junk Removal Authority, these 2. Like, what does GTM look like for both these companies?

Yeah, so before I start something, I try and think, hey, do I already have distribution? Do I have a market here that's going to be interested in this already? And that's something when, uh, just recently I had a guy that's— he's probably in his mid to late 20s, super— he's been real successful working in kind of the corporate space. I mean, he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, uh, does well, but he's always kind of wanted to do his, his own thing and he's not sure what that is. And so the thing I kind of told him was that, man, take the next year to 2 years, start building up a following, build up some sort of distribution, find something that you're passionate about to talk about, and just build that following up. And then when you're ready and you figure out what you want to do, uh, and oftentimes your followers will actually help you kind of, uh, kind of determine that, then now you got somebody to sell to. Because the most discouraging thing in the world is to have a great product and you develop it and you spend time and you can't get it out there. And a lot of that just takes time. I always use the 2-year mark, and that's not necessarily the case, especially with some of the algorithmic changes with some of the social platforms. You can catch on pretty quick, maybe quicker now than you used to be able to. But plan on 2 years, and if it happens faster, great. But get that following and try. And the first question I always ask is, do I have the following now? Do the people that know me, are they willing to buy whatever I'm going into? Recently, I just had a great idea. I went off on a vacation. And I came up with kind of an idea that I think would work really well. And I, I did. I spent— I probably spent 6 or 7 hours thinking through it, if not more. It might be more like 15 or 20, really. And then I came to this decision. I was like, man, this is so far out of my wheelhouse. My core would suffer because I'd have to put a lot of time and effort to build up this following and to make the relationships that I'd have to have. Get the following first is definitely number one.

And the GTM systems for these 2 companies, it's like mostly ads? Do you have salespeople? How does top of funnel work for these 2?

The main thing that we do is we put out free content on our social stuff that's helpful. I mean, that's been the number one thing along the way. And then we mix in ads. And actually, a lot of times our ads is actually driving people to the masterclass series we do. Every other week we do a masterclass on something junk removal, could be something new, could be something that's been around forever, just revisiting. On how to start, run, grow, and sell, you know, potentially sell a junk removal company. So a lot of the time the stuff we do is, hey, let's get people to that, and then I know from there we demonstrate our expertise, we build up that trust, and then there's always a pitch at kind of the end of that stuff. So, um, or there tends to be a pitch. So it's kind of a Gary Vee strategy a little bit, you know, the jab, jab, right hook. And the paid ads are oftentimes just trying to get people to come to the to, to, to the really kind of free, um, helpful content. And then once we have people and we've gathered their email addresses and their, their phone numbers and all, then there's some automated follow-up as well as a sales— there's— we've got a few salespeople as well that'll follow up, especially if somebody's kind of, um, uh, kind of hot. And then on the JRA side, we do regular calls through our client success managers. Who I went in, I paid a little bit more for CSMs than what a lot of marketing agencies do. We pay our people pretty well. They're all, they are all in the States and, um, they've got some sales incentives and all as well to make sales. So that what I found is they're very good at identifying that. Not always are they the best at closing it, but they can let us know, hey, this person is interested in this. So then our sales team and our mark, we send them the right marketing and that kind of stuff to kind of, you know, close that, that upsell down.

Right. While you're building all these businesses, you're also building a family, right? Um, what's your education philosophy once your older ones reach, uh, learning age? Do you want to homeschool them? Uh, do you want to make them little entrepreneurs? What's your strategy there?

It's an excellent question, and my kids are 4, 2, and 1. So they're young, and that's something that I think about often that I can't say I've figured out the answer for yet. We're going to put them in private school. So there's a private school in this area called Thales Academy. It's non— I like what they do in terms of learning. So they use technology, but they want to teach the core foundation first. Smaller class sizes. You've got to apply, so they don't take everybody. So they're exposed to smart people. And At least through elementary and middle, we'll, we'll have them likely in that. And then come high school, we'll probably put them in public school because in my opinion, that gives them a little bit of exposure to the real world. Plus, we're very big into sports. My wife was a D1 college volleyball player. She coaches for fun. She, she enjoys it, and she's actually won a couple state titles in high school. She coaches club volleyball and that sort of deal. So she's very athletic-minded. I, I am too. Competition. I mentioned I didn't play sports, but I mean, I raced and I've always been big into competition and we go to sporting events all the time. So, that's important. And then, it's interesting, I teach a lot of mindset stuff now. So, my son, all of our kids do push-ups every night or they attempt to. I mean, obviously, they're not great form. He's getting to be that way. And then, last night, he was doing box jumps. So, we actually started logging box jumps and we're like, all right, man, every day we're going to get one more. And he was frustrated for a week or two. He was trying to get to a certain height and he couldn't. He kept falling, he kept falling, he'd get frustrated. Remember, he's 4 years old, so he might throw a temper tantrum or whatever. And I'd say, all right, we're going to go down one level here and every day we're going to add an extra rep and then we're going to try once a week at least, we're going to try this next level. Well, last night he actually hit it. So I can't answer that question yet just because I don't have that experience yet, but it's something I'm thinking about. And, uh, you know, parenting is interesting because they said, you know, obviously you grow as a parent as you have kids. So, um, none of us are ready for it when we first begin. I remember we first brought our first son home, we're looking at him and holding him, it's like, how the hell do we keep this thing alive? And but you learn, you know. And so I think as long as we know what we want our kids to earn their way— I want to be able to leave them something. That's important to me. It's not important to everybody, but I want to build something great these kids can inherit. And a lot of what I do now, it used to be was for me It's for planes, it's for cars, it was for the experiences and to travel. And I still enjoy traveling and those things, but now the main thing is, all right, I want to give them the environment for them to thrive. And then if they earn it, I want them to have something that they can inherit from me and maybe grow, or they can sell, or whatever.

I love that. Yeah, that's, um, pretty cool because box jumps are pretty risky, right? It's like 2 feet jump, so it's like if you fail, you You've got your hands to save you and, uh, yeah, to minimize the damage. Yeah.

I mean, obviously, you know, there's, you know, he's, I can't, I don't know. He's probably 3 foot tall. So, I mean, or maybe he's about 42 inches tall, I guess. So, you know, he's 3 and a half feet tall. So, I mean, these are short boxes, but yeah, he's got pretty good abs. So he might pass me relatively soon. I've never been able to jump.

So yeah, point, point is it's scary, right? So it's like, it's not just physical. It's also like getting over your fears. So I love that. Where can people find out more about you, Lee?

Yeah, you know, I post regularly on Instagram and Facebook just off my personal page, Lee Godbold. And then on the business side of things, we post pretty regularly on the Junk Removal Authority YouTube channel. So that's more junk removal specific stuff on the JRA channel, whereas the Instagram and Facebook is going to be kind of all over the place. So you hear different things about me, about business and parenting, and kind of, kind of see my, uh, my stuff I've got going on, and you'll figure out if you like me or not. But maybe you'll learn some stuff and maybe we can connect and do something together.

That was Leanne Charles.