How to Start a Trash Bin Cleaning Business from Scratch. Ep. #82

I wanted to run it full time. Don't believe in doing things part time. Route density is where I make my money. The denser I keep my route, the more money I make. I kind of view as that Pepsi Coke thing too, right? They put machines right next to each other and they both grow in sales. Your back's against the wall. Trust me, when you got to put food on the table for your kids, you think a little differently.

The cleanliness of a bathroom in a restaurant or a gas station tells you everything about the management of that business. How did you find those 300 customers? Like what's the 80, 20 of it? Welcome to the Kerner office. We did a deep dive today on the trash bin cleaning industry, which is a super fast growing industry, one that a lot of people are interested in because you can get a tight route density and you can get monthly recurring revenue like a software business with very low churn and it can be very profitable business. So Jason Feller was managing clubs for his full time job for 20 years and he got sick of it. He got sick of missing his kids, sports activities and being away from his family. So he quit his job, bought a $48,000 trash bin cleaning trailer and now does this full time. And he has 300 recurring customers. Jason was very generous with his time. And so if anyone is interested in starting this business or at least learning about this business, how to find customers, how to reverse engineer this, how to be profitable, how to get a better route density, then you're going to love this. Please share with a friend and we'll see you next time. Well, why don't we just start by telling us who you are? Sure.

You know Jason Feller here and got into this coming up from the service industry. I thought I wanted to be a chef in high school and went to culinary arts programs in high school, magnet school down in Towson, Maryland, Carver center for Art and Technology. And before I went to college, had the great conversation with my parents of what are you going to do if you don't want to be a chef? And what can you do if, you know, if you go get a regular education and kind of, if you want to go back and be a chef, you can do this. So. So I went to University of Delaware, graduated back in 2003 and then realized maybe I didn't want to be a chef. I love to love cooking and I still love cooking and playing with food and making that my art, but it was an art for me and had worked at a number of private country clubs at that time and taken some private country club management courses. I saw that I loved service. I loved taking care of people and making sure people were happy in the end. And in private club management, I got to serve and ensure that people were happy. Some days, you know, you were resolving problems and some days you were, you were bringing that experience and thought the experience was cool. So fast forward 20 years, I've bounced around the east coast in a handful of country clubs, a few country clubs that were top of the nation, and a few country clubs that needed to kind of be brought up by their bootstraps. And so 20 years later, I finally decided maybe this side of the service industry isn't for me at this point. I've got two young, young kids. One is in 10th grade now, the other is in seventh grade now. Two of my girls and they're becoming active in band, music experiences and sports. And I said, what can I do where I can be around my kids more and on the time I want to be around my kids. So, you know, the private club experience, it is a FaceTime experience and you have to show up and you have to be there and present when your, your guests are there. And unfortunately for a family lifestyle for me that I was aiming for, it was happening at the, you know, 4 to 7, 10pm so I'd go to work and 8am in the morning, I'd be home at 9 o' clock at night. And you just miss everything.

I'm curious, Jason, like, what, after managing private clubs for 20 years, was there like a triggering event or some impetus that happened where you're like, okay, yep, I'm done. Like, did you miss something or was to just kind of slowly build up and then you, you made the move.

It was a slow buildup. There's a couple times when I was, when I would take off to see kids events and activities and my phone was just ringing and just texts and saying, what's going on with this? What's happening with this? And. And I said, you know, that's not what I'm here for. And I need to separate from that idea of it. I came up from the hands on management side of things, so I had a guilt for not being there and present, but I want to see things with my family. And that, that was kind of one of those final, you know, straws that broke the camel's back there and said I need to separate and I need to be part of my family and I need to tell them they're part of the family and shut off my work Phone and not feel guilty.

You know, how long did it take you to go from that realization to day one of your first business? And what did that process look like?

I've always wanted to own my own business. I've always thought I could do it. And even with conversations with the board of directors and people I worked for at the country club, a lot of them would say that they wake up in the morning and they'd be able to, you know, look in the mirror and make their own decision and. And know that in the end that it rested on that decision that they made. They knew that they were the final one. And in country club management, it is a different world. And you were always going back and forth with boards. If you've ever volunteered for a nonprofit or worked with any other charities or religious organizations, a lot of times they're. They're through group decision. It was probably a couple years out where I started saying, I want to make my own decisions 100%. I want to start knowing that. That it's all on me. So it took me about two years or so of thinking through this process. And I still love clutch club management. I just wanted to start making the decisions on my own. And one time I was looking and saw that I was going out to get the dumpster cleaned at the. At the country club, because our dumpster was between the main entrance for the members and the entrance for the service staff. And our service staff is walking past this dumpster in June, July, and August that just absolutely reeked. And. And we have to provide an experience that is second to none. And they're walking in, the first thing they smell is disgusting, and the first thing they see is disgusting. And then our members were smelling the same thing. So automatically, the two people who I needed to please the most were already turned off. I'm big on sensory experiences. I'm big on the fact that clean isn't just physically being clean. It's the emotion that it gives you. Just like some people, you know, get their lawn mowed on a regular basis. They love seeing the lines. Some people like their house cleaned. I feel that trash can cleaning was part of that. So, you know, I saw starting from the back of the dumpster and taking care of my employees, my restaurant became cleaner, the kitchen became cleaner, the carpets were all cleaner. As soon as we started taking care of it from the back of the house. You know, some people have written books about, you know, it's the broken windows theory or the light bulbs theory. And for me, it's a dumpster theory. You know, start, start of the dumpster.

Start of your trash. Like the, the cleanliness of a restaurant or the cleanliness of a bathroom in a restaurant or a gas station tells you everything about the management of that business, right?

You are spot on. I just had a conversation with, with the local gas station owner and they said, well, why are you choosing to spend your money with us? Because I'm spending roughly $8,000 a year in fuel right now. And you know, I said, because you have a great parking lot and I get my truck and trailer too, and I like using the bathrooms in there because they're clean. Because I feel like I walk in there and it's a feeling. It's not clean as a feeling. It's not just the appearance of. You can spray it down with sanitizer.

All you want, but yeah, okay, so you noticed that these dumpsters were stinky. You wanted to fix it. What was the next step? Did you do it yourself or did you find a company to come do it?

So I had tried to get my dishwashers to do it, and they were doing a poor job at best. They didn't want to do it. They didn't have the feeling it was, I'm hired be a dishwasher. They're already, you know, being paid at the lowest of the pay scale. And they just didn't, they didn't want to do it. So I finally started reaching out. The local trash hauler would have to come out, take our dumpster away from us. We had a compactor. They'd have to drop a 40 yard roll off dumpster in our driveway. And a week later they'd come back and they return that, that original compactor dumpster back to us cleaned. And we were paying just shy of $1,000 to have that done. Now a thousand dollars, you know, for that experience was, was a great price because I knew that I could get an initiation fee and dues coming in if I could make sure that the place was maintained at the top level. But a thousand dollars is a lot of money to get that done. And I said I could do that cheaper.

And how often were you doing it?

I was doing it during the summer, once a year.

Okay.

If I, if it were less, less expensive, I probably would have done it two or three times a year or four times a year. And that's where I started researching it and saying, maybe I can, maybe I can do this. Maybe I can hire somebody. Maybe I can come up with a, you know, come up with another business plan. And the Model that I'm running right now is majority residential. And I started coming across there's three or four vendors that make the trailers in the industry. No one is currently, or there are very few people that are currently trying to franchise it, but most of them are building the trailers. There's three or four companies that are doing that. And I was amazed that they were, they were taking these regular roll off trash cans that most of the cities provide or your trash hauler provides. And they were basically doing a quick power wash on the outside and then you lift them up on a boom and over a receptacle to catch all the dirty water and junk that's left in the bottom. And they'd have these rotating spray heads that spray into the trash bin. And it made me think back to my mother in law who used to clean our trash cans for us. And she, she couldn't deal with a dirty trash can. So I started saying, wow, this is, this is something that people across the nation are paying for across the world. It appears that it started over in Europe. It was kind of brought back from overseas. And part of that process was conserv conservation of water. It was rats and animals and flies and pests in the cities more so that they were more aware of it. And you look at the European cities, they have stricter water controls and they have major pest problems. To that point, I've actually been called into to a number of commercial properties and their comments have been our rat population is down to nothing now that they had rat problems. The pest control was struggling to take control of it with the baits that they had. And we came in, we cleaned it up, we removed all the food debris, all the ingredients that cause the rest to stay and make it comfortable for them. So again, it's about a feeling, but it's also the cleanliness.

And that was in a commercial dumpster then, right?

Correct. So I've worked with commercial establishments as well, but 90% of my 9% of my customer base is residential.

Okay, all right, so you start doing some research on the trailers. Now is this a purpose built truck or literally just a trailer?

It is a purpose built trailer. And again, these builders are building them in truck format, they're building them in skid format to go into the back of a truck. If you were to look at a three quarter ton or one ton truck and they're also building them in trailer format, I chose to go with the used trailer versus getting it out there and putting my entire lump sum out there. Trucks are expensive. They're built on the Isuzu NRR frame or something that is above that one ton frame and they get expensive. And I knew this business was not going to be an overnight success. I knew going into this I would not be able to put a thousand dollars down and triple it overnight. It was intended to be a three to five year haul to create a business. It was was a model of success and stability versus having to generate something new every day.

Okay, so how much did the trailer set you back and what would a new one have been of the same make and model?

I chose to go with a used trailer and I was in at roughly $48,000 into the trailer. I had to make some modifications to it initially as again I wanted to operate out of my house. So we had to make some modifications to the trailer so it would fit in my garage. A new trailer was at that point in time running roughly $70,000 and there was a 6 to 12 month wait. So I chose to, to try and save it up front.

Yeah.

And I bought into a business branding already that someone had already created the website and so it had already created some of the market materials. So that saved me roughly another $5,000 right there. Those were things that in the beginning were valuable to me.

So was this someone that was going out of business?

It was someone who was running as a part time gig. They had a successful job in another job and they wanted to keep that other job. Whereas I was saying, you know, I'm going all in on this and I could, you know, I probably could have hired somebody to run this business for me. And there's a number of people across the nation that have done that. They keep their, their day jobs and they're hiring people to, to run the trucks and trailers for them. I chose that. It was something that, that I wanted to, to jump out and run on my own, but I wanted to run it full time. I don't believe in doing things part time.

Yeah, I love it. All or nothing. That's how I am.

Yeah, your back's against the wall. Trust me. When you got to put food on the table for your kids, you think a little differently.

Yep. There's no plan B. Nope. Did you get any customers with him or how far away was his route or territory?

So he was based out of Pittsburgh. I'm based out of the east coast of Pennsylvania. South, south of Philadelphia. So it's a four hour, four hour difference. When I looked at his customer base, it wasn't worth me trying to run from out from here to Hire somebody out in Pittsburgh to run that business model. He had been in business for a number of years and, and hadn't picked up a ton of customers. So I think he'd been in business for four or five years. And, you know, I've already tripled the amount of customers that he had on a regular basis, partially by doing it full time. He was again, only doing it part time.

Did that concern you at all? Like, even though you had already this once one sample size and you'd already done a ton of research? I'm sure. Was that kind of demoralizing to know that he hadn't made it work? Or what made you think that you could do it differently other than just being full time?

That's a great question. It gives me a little pause there. No, I had spoken to six or seven different companies, some who were doing well, some who weren't. When you go looking through the classifieds, everyone is always selling in the classifieds. And I always think it's. The funniest question is, oh, this must be terrible. This must be terrible. Everyone's always selling. Well, if you go to LoopNet or Biz Buy Sell, they're always selling their business. That's the intent of those sites. Uh, so the classified sections are always selling. I talked to a number of business business owners and reached out to them directly. I was watching a couple podcasts and I reached out to them directly. There's. And I said, what are you doing? What are you doing right? What are you doing wrong? And, you know, what are my expectations? There's a couple guys that, that start taking money after two years, and there's a couple guys that five, six, seven years in haven't taken money. And they're all running the business model slightly differently. It was a lot of the conversation was about focus and focusing on the business. And if you have the focus on a business, it will grow. I can tell you that. That's what's happened for me. If you have that focus on the business, it can grow. And I'm just, you know, a year and a half in, I'm just shy of 300 maintenance customers. And that when I say maintenance as a subscription model and, you know, I tend to grow in another 75 next year, I probably won't be able to double it. I'd love to, but I probably won't be able to. And I'm profitable now. Profitable. It's not. Again, I'm not an overnight millionaire here, but I'm starting to make money.

And that's amazing.

That's a good sign.

And so how. How far into it are you today?

I started in February of 23, just about 18 months in.

Okay, and how did you find those 300 customers? Like, what's the 80, 20 of is a grind.

Facebook is amazing. And I participate in my local chamber. I like to talk to people, get out there and have that conversation, get the trailer in front of people and be visible and present. That is so, you know, Facebook and being visible and present. I did walk tag trash cans. One of the models we're considering right now is door knocking. I am. We go back and forth. You know, my wife is a part owner in the business, and we go back and forth. That's. We. We always hated when people came to our doors. But at the same time, it's a model in this industry that has proven itself to be successful. And so we're trying to find a happy, happy medium of staying true to our values of wanting to keep people's space protected to them, but also to, you know, growing the business.

Yeah, I want to get back to that, but I want to go back to Facebook. So when I, when I think of Facebook, I think of like four pillars. There's like, you, you know, organic Facebook, there's Facebook groups, there's Facebook marketplace, and then there's Facebook paid ads. What has worked the best for you?

You said organic groups. Facebook marketplace paid and.

And well, or organic. Like posting on Facebook to your friends and then Facebook groups. Facebook marketplace, Facebook ads, Facebook groups.

I post in religiously. It's. If it's the 1st and 15th, I post in them and then I ask my customers to post in them. I get the best response when it's. I guess it would be an organ into a group where my customer says, hey, I just use crystal clean cans. And my trash cans have never smelled better. I'm not afraid to go to them anymore. And next thing you know, I've got massive amounts of hits to my website. Whether it's over my Facebook page. I have new signups. That is the best, hands down. This year, I've actually paid for more advertising. I was not doing much advertising last year. I've bumped up my sponsored sponsored ads and trying to create that feedback link and loop where they're having to. To submit information to me. So I get a little bit of their information. They get a discount code in response to that. That would probably be my, my second, my second biggest through Facebook there. What I've actually found is a lot of people don't use that discount link because I track, you know, the names.

Yeah.

And I'll sign up without the discount link and. Okay, great. What's that?

Perfect.

It's great. You know, I love it. But I can track that. They've. They've sent me a message through there.

Yeah.

You know, maybe someone's looking at it and saying it's only 10 bucks or it's only 25%, but they aren't using that discount link, which I find intriguing.

Now, when you say sponsored posts, like, what, what do you mean? Like, are you, is that a boosted Facebook Marketplace listing or a sponsored ad?

I don't use marketplace for, for Facebook specifically. I use the sponsored ads and go through meta's ad advertising process.

So you're just, you're posting and then you're boosting that post?

No, I actually. So I keep my, my ads completely separate from my, my Facebook.

So these are proper Facebook ads that you're running as well?

Correct, Proper Facebook ads intended to target audiences. And I identify the audiences I want to target. Again, I. Ironically, you know, last year we went in thinking it was going to be 65 and olders. It is not. I'm looking for 35 to 54 year olds that have kids in the home, pets at home and that are busy, that don't want to take that extra time that, that say, you know what, my trash cans are dirty and I don't want to take the extra time to clean it. Look, my wife hadn't touched our trash cans in eight years, so now she'll actually go out to the trash can.

Yeah. So how much do you charge and what is your turnover like your churn or how, how long do customers stay with you on average?

We have four different pricing plans. We did discontinue one pricing plan. We discontinued the bimonthly plan six times a year. It did not fit with our routes. So after monthly, quarterly, twice a year and a one time clean, currently roughly 80 to 85% of our subscribers are in the quarterly plan. And you know, we're the mid Atlantic. We do operate all year, all year long. We have some heavy heat in the summers and sometimes we can get some cold winters. So this will be the second winter season I'm going through. The second part of your question was, and I got off my tangent, what do you charge? So it's charging is $25 a month for two cans. Most likely. We'll discuss and review if that goes up next year or not. Probably somewhere around April, May. $35 a month on the quarterly basis or $35 a quarter. Excuse me, on a quarterly basis for two cans and then for the twice a year, it's $50 each time and one time is $65. And that's all pricing for two cans.

85% on quarterly then, huh?

Correct. We're looking at some of different models. We've had some requests from our customers to do. Let's call it a. I'll call it a seasonal package. And I'm looking at seasonal packages right now. You know, April through October, doing a monthly plan and then doing a one off in the middle of winter. One of my fears is that if I do it the April through October, I won't have any business in the middle of winter. I want to kind of figure out how to keep that going. Our turn on our business. I've lost two customers due to dissatisfaction and I've lost 10 customers to moving. I'm just. I'm trying to think of my numbers in my head and I verified that they moved too. One said they felt like they were paying too much and the. The other felt. Felt like it was just never clean enough for them. And so I said, okay. You know, out of. I've now had. Had over 500 customers. I said, okay, I can lose two for that.

Wow, that. Those are great numbers. So you've had over 500 customers total and you have 300 recurring today. So 200 of those either churned out or were just one time.

Correct. My subscribers only. Only have lost 12 subscribers.

Okay.

My one time. That's what they sign up for. And I. Yeah, I expect that I have to chase them again.

Yeah. Have you thought about changing your pricing to make the monthly option more attractive as opposed to like a seasonal thing like you just said? Or maybe the better question is what are your costs on like one wash? If you're doing it yourself versus having an employee do it.

If I'm doing it myself versus having an employee do it. So my goal is actually to get to somewhere between 800 and 1500 customers here and be able to determine my next business level once I get to there. So my fixed costs right now are roughly $3 a stop.

Okay.

Fuel and windshield time are my biggest expenses. That's one of the reasons why I'm probably not going to look at lowering the monthly costs and increasing the monthly costs. I can fit more people onto a quarterly schedule than I can on a monthly schedule. I would end up having less customers on a monthly schedule just because of windshield time. If you're looking at roughly six minutes to stop the max, I Could get into a route would be 10 an hour. And if I can increase my, my business capacity on the quarterly level, I think that's where I'm going to continue to push towards and try and make the actually go the opposite way of, of what might, you know, what makes sense to, to or made sense to me in the beginning. It makes sense to me sometimes too, is trying to push for monthlies. I'm thinking of pushing towards quarterlies.

Okay.

You know, in the winter time, you know, some of the complaints that have been is, well, you know, do I need my trash can cleaned every month in the winter?

Yeah.

So I've got to figure out that again, it's a feeling, you know.

Yeah.

Germs build up the same way. It's just a feeling of clean.

And the smell, like the smell is not quite there in the winter.

Flies are down, smells down.

And you've probably noticed like a lot of like it might not be as necessary every month, right?

Correct. And I think you're, you're spot on. Some people in this, especially in this mid Atlantic region. You were down in Florida and Texas 100%. I'd be going for monthly, you know, it would be, it would be. My target is monthly. If I was in Florida, you know, I'd, I'd probably even look at doing it every other week. You have the humidity, you have the heat consistently, except for what, December and January probably, you probably have those two months off. But up here, you know, it's, it's. My customer acquisition is, is dropping right now. I'm not, it's getting cold. People are saying, you know, starting to go back indoors and they're not walking past their trash can as much.

Yeah.

Trash cans in their garage. It's in a better temperature control state right now.

Yeah.

If even the flies produce at a faster rate right now they're, they're in a better temperature control state. So.

Okay, so about 140 bucks a year per customer for 300 customers. Do you have any employees or is it just you right now?

It is just me right now.

Okay. I love that, like, you know all these numbers, like I had to turn this guy, that guy. They're, you know, 1, 2, 3 maple. They're like, you only know that if you're only in the business. And like really beautiful things happen when you're only in that one business. It's the only thing you're doing. Like that's how the best businesses are built.

That's my hope is that I can focus on it without over obsessing. On it. And that's always a challenge, you know, coming from the world I came from. You know, focus on some of those details there. I can grow it by knowing where I need to be and when I need to be there. You know, right now I'm manually doing all the mapping and route planning. I'm manually doing all the texting. I'm manually doing all the email blasts. So there is a knowledge that you gain from that. And yes, I would love to train people to do my job. That is my ultimate goal. I love leadership. I love businesses and business growth in the short term, you've got to, you gotta dig in and you gotta say, I've done this before.

Yeah. Okay, so 75 homes a quarter. How long does it take you to do those 75 homes? I know the routes are weird and you got to work around some external circumstances, but let's say that, you know, all else equal, how much time does it take to do those 75 homes?

So I'm usually, it's probably roughly 12 hours a month, you know, 15 hours a month. Out there on the road. You're not out there a ton. It's again, you're, you're. It's. It's more of windshield time. I live in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania. Rolling hills, beautiful rolling hills and countryside. I cover 180, you know, 180 square miles is what I'm covering. And that is probably, probably my biggest or is my biggest factor is getting across the county to where I need to be. Once I get into a neighborhood, I can knock out anywhere from six to 12 homes in an hour. And so again, we talk about targeting, you know, certain markets. Once I get into a neighborhood, I'm targeting that neighborhood. And I'm working with the, my customers to reach out to the neighbor and say, by the way, if we get to 10 homes, we'll get a price break.

That's cool.

I'd love to get to 25 homes. I have one that's got 23 homes in the neighborhood. I'd like to get it to 25 homes.

What do you think is different about that neighborhood with 23 homes?

It is younger families. It is younger up and coming families have their kids in sports and schools and they're participating in other things. They have pets at home and they have their require, their HOA requires them keep their, their containers in their garage. And they're saying, well, I got to walk past my trash can every single day and it reeks. So at least if I could take that off for a period of time.

What would you say is the average home value of that neighborhood compared to your average neighborhood or the other neighborhoods?

I'm not sure I can relate it to home values. You're probably looking at $550,000 home. I serve homes anywhere from 300,000 to, you know, 3 million. Probably looking at 500 to $600,000 of the value of the home. I'm not sure I can relate that to anything that I see. As far as customer pickups, I actually have a couple, more than a couple now in mobile home parks where again they just, they value the feeling of cleanliness.

Yeah.

So I have not been able to directly correlate that.

I'm just wondering if like, if there's like a style of home or a year built or something that you could correlate to the type of person that's more likely to live in the home and go that direction.

For customer, I'll have to, I'll have to dig a little deeper into that. So yeah, I mean they're probably in their, their late 30s to early 50s and they're managing, they're probably mid level career in their, in their management levels there and two income earning families for the majority of them and they've, I'd say the majority of them have, have multiple kids.

I'd be curious to get all, take the spreadsheet that I'm sure you already have of all your addresses and have a virtual assistant. Just go to Zillow one by one and just assign a home value to all of them. Just to observe and look and like sort and, and look for patterns like oh, okay. Oh, interesting, huh? I, I bet you would learn a lot there.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's an interesting case study. I'm actually working with someone right now on looking at the demographics of where I am in locations and highlighting them and saying, all right, these are homes I should be targeting more. Based on government data.

How many people would you say live within your route area?

There's roughly 120,000 homes within my route area.

Wow.

I don't specifically look at people. I try to buy the homes.

So it's probably like almost half a million people. 400,000 people.

I'm aiming for 1% if I can, if I could target 1%, 1 to 2%. That makes a great business for me. You know, I'm, I'm looking to, for lifestyle first over. Over money.

Yeah. If you got a customer in like the corner of your market, it's not in a neighborhood, it's just on a main road. Would you say no to them or no?

Gosh, that's the hardest part about business is saying no. But that's also the best part is coming from country club management and private club management. You would always figure out how to say yes. And not that I'm figuring out how to say no right now, but I've had to say no. It just doesn't make sense. I had someone that was literally 50 minutes from my house and it was exactly as you're talking about. And I finally said to him, I said, hey, look, I hate to send you to my competitor, but I have a competitor that's servicing your area, that, that's more local to you. Some of them I've said, if I can pick up, you know, a few more people in your neighborhood or nearby, then I'll, I'll try it and I'll try it for a year. I'm going through that process right now of looking at one or two homes that are on that edge and pulling back my territory. I use, I use a program called my service area and that helps me keep my area tight. And I just keep reminding myself I need to keep my area tight. Route density is where I make my money. The denser I keep my, my route, the more money you make per hour, the more money that I make, you know, from my cleanings. And so I'm really. You, you hit the nail on the head there.

So, so you're really on the road for like three hours a week is all.

It's, it's a little bit more than that, you know, it's.

It's 12amonth. So I'm trying, but it. Does it not shake?

Just cleaning is 12amonth. I'm on, I'm, I'm on the road. If I'm on the road, it's probably three hours each day. But just cleaning the Kansas baby, 12 hours max.

Okay, but still three hours a day, that's not like five days a week we're talking.

No, I've, again, I've done route density. So I'm. Right now I'm maybe working three days a week.

Wow. Okay.

Is my goal out there? Just be present. My, my viewpoint on business is to be present, to be, you know, out there among people. And the more I'm out there having those conversations, a, it's less expensive than paying to market, but B, it creates a long term effect. Yeah, people know your name, people know the business. And if I can keep that steady, it's obviously a philosophy and mentality sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Yeah, that is kind of an interesting framework of, you know, these business ideas that can be part time because not all of them can be. It's almost like a potential trap. Like it's a trap to incite you to split your attention between other things, like maybe a second side hustle or a full time job. And so it's almost like you have to be extra committed to what you're doing. If you have something that might only take a few hours a day, but if you are, the reward is massive. Right.

You're saying the right things or at least recognizing the right things is that there are many times my concentration starts to get diverted and I say, well, what about this idea? What about that idea? How do I incorporate this? Then you end up chasing, you know, this wild dream down the line. Even, you know, I love businesses, I love thinking the idea of these things. But sometimes you end up chasing the wrong direction away from your business model. It is sometimes dangerous in starting business. You truly have to stop and say, wait a second. Yeah, who am I talking to? Am I tagging trash cans today? Am I doing, you know, you know, going to a chamber event? Am I going to a different meeting, a networking meeting? What am I doing to, to stay focused on my business?

Yeah, how does tagging trash cans go? Like, what is your, do you know what your conversion rate? I assume you're just like putting flyers on the trash can.

Yeah. So some people use can like door hangers on the handles of the trash cans. I use a little postcard with a discount code on it and a sticky. And I can either drive down the road and tag them or I can walk down, you know, a couple neighborhoods or six and seven miles of walking. So it's, you know, it's a little bit of time consuming. I would say that the process you, you have, you cannot truly see a direct return on that. You know, every once in a while I get someone saying, I saw it from the hangar or the trash can tag. What I found is many of the customers, I've had to tag their neighborhoods three or four times and I, you know, and usually it's about two months later that I'll see them sign up. Which I, I find really interesting is it's not an immediate, it's not an immediate thing. In those tag neighborhoods. Those people who search for me on Google, it's an immediate sign up. Those people who come to me through Facebook, it's an immediate sign up. The trash can tags. It'd Be the same as direct mail to me where I truly have to invest in that. And it is a time basis. It is three, six, nine months. I have one that just came to me and it was literally 12 months later. And they said, oh, I got a tag on my trash can. And I went and looked at my sheet and I said, I haven't tagged that for 12 months.

Wow.

And so somebody held onto it for 12 months and until it made sense to them.

Do you have any, any bearing on how many tags you put out there to the world and how many customers that those have brought you in?

You're probably not going to like to hear that. I probably put out roughly 6,000 tags or so. Probably brought me in 20 customers.

That's okay for me.

Again, you know, this is the, the philosophy of I'm going to hear no a lot. It is not something that people think of. It's not something that most people, you know, look, you know, lawn care, you know, in the 80s, who would have thought that. That you would have had people mowing your lawn every week and you'd be paying them to do it? That was ridiculous for my parents to think of, well, why not go get your own tractor and do it? Well, now I, I know of three people in my neighborhood of 75 that mow their own lawns, you know, because just the process of having someone else do it, it simplifies their life.

Yeah.

And including me, I did the, you know, the cost benefit analysis and I said, I'm going to spend how much on a tractor and I could spend how much on, you know, having someone else mow my lawn. It, you know, so that's kind of the way I see it with trash can cleaning. It's going to come. It's going to come along. As long as you can say that the, the path. It's going to come along and you'll get.

Yeah. And you'll ride the wave.

Ride the wave. Slow and steady.

How are, how are competitors for you? Is it a. Is it a real threat or is it just kind of like a. An annoyance or is not really there?

That's an annoyance. You know, the, Some of the pressure. Local pressure washing guys, you know, try and clean trash cans. And that's an annoyance. There is one local guy, local, 45 minutes away. He covers the same, you know, similar territory to me. He's got a truck. And that has been good and bad by us both marketing in this region. I believe we both benefited. You know, I've talked to him. We have a seemingly you know, open relationship. We both benefit from it. He's had some of his best years. He's three years into the industry, and he's had some of his best years. Now that I've jumped in and started marketing and advertising, because again, I'll get calls saying, oh, I saw your truck here, and I know I wasn't in that neighborhood.

Yeah, yeah.

And it just happens that they caught my marketing in advertising after seeing his truck. Yeah, the, the pressure washer guys are a little bit of annoyance because they, they added on and they, you know, they'll clean for $5 a can. And you're saying, what, you know, what are you doing? You know, you're spending 20 minutes on that can, you know, to clean it, and then you're dumping the stuff in the street. So all their debris in their driveway.

Yeah.

And, you know, it just doesn't make sense to me.

That is an interesting dynamic when a new customer comes in. It doesn't happen everywhere, but in new industries it certainly does. And I remember Elon Musk talking about this with Tesla where he was thrilled that every car company in the world was making electric vehicles because it was growing their business. It was educating everyone. That's really interesting.

I kind of view it as that Pepsi Coke thing too. Right. They put machines right next to each other and they both grow in sales. I know a few people who own multiple restaurants and they literally own one right across the street from the other, and they just. It benefits off that. And that's what I'm. Again, you know, this is a little bit of a business philosophy and, and hoping that it pays off, and it's a risk I'm willing to take, is understanding that I have a competitor in the market. I'm okay with that.

What do you hate about the business?

Alone time. Yeah, I like people.

You're an extrovert.

Yeah. I like being around people. And for me right now, being in the truck, it is. There is a benefit of it, of being alone, but sometimes I have a little bit too much alone time.

Yeah.

And if you're in the truck alone, it's. It's tough.

Yeah. And then what do you love about it?

I. I like that it's mine. I like that. That if. If I'm going to change something, I get to make that change. I like, I have, you know, I talk about being alone, but I've met a lot of customers. I've met a lot of, you know, a lot of people. And I like being part of the community. I like being able to Say that I want to sponsor the local hunger walk or, you know, someone's T ball league or whatever it may be. I like being able to make that decision on my own and say, you know, I could participate in that. Like, you know, it's my business. I can, you know, I know there's no, no immediate ROI on sponsoring T ball.

Yeah.

You know what, there's some kid that's out there having a good time and their family gets to, to watch their kid have a good time. And I know, you know, watching my kids swim and my, my kid playing marching band, you know, those are the things that, that are meaningful to me. That's what I like about being a business owner.

Yeah.

Process. As far as trash can cleaning, I like knowing they have clean trash cans. I like the, the feeling that I get when it smells like, like orange and citrus afterwards and there's no, you know, gum stuck to it and there's no dirt stuck to the inside of the can. It feels good to see clean.

Yeah, I'm glad you said that about loving being able to make your own decisions because that's something that I know I take for granted because I've been self employed forever, you know, so for me it's normal to just go do what I want. But that's a luxury. Right? That really is.

I reported to a board of nine and I had 11 committees that I worked with and each committee had anywhere between seven and 14 people on it. One of the bad things about country club management is some things take time because you're working through many opinions and many feelings on it. It's also one of the greatest things, you know, if I were to change something about my business model right now is I've got to get out of that mentality of taking my time to do things. I've got to be faster to action. I've got to be faster to, to getting out there. It just was not the mentality that came. Safety was in taking time and making sure you had buy in from everybody. So I'm learning a lot as I grow my entrepreneurial spirit here.

What are your net margins like in the business? I would imagine they're, they're pretty good.

It's a numbers game. Right. So I'm looking at, I'm trying to look at my numbers here. I apologize. But you know, I'm looking at the cost to clean a trash can is, is roughly $3 to clean two trash cans. Again, my, that's my fixed cost. It's, it's when I start looking at Fuel and time marketing dollars that add in there. So. And the, the lease of the equipment or the payments for the equipment? It's not a lease, but the loan for the equipment. So, you know, once I can get this up to scale, my margin looks that much better. Next year is going to look that much better because my fixed costs are already there. Right now my net Profit is what, 20% on that?

As your route density goes up, it only gets better.

That's the goal. If I were to be able to get that down quite a bit, my cost of customer acquisition is roughly $50 right now. When I can start getting that down to $20, that makes a big difference.

Yeah. Is this a business that you going back in time that you would start all over again or second, similar question, would you recommend the others start this business? If, if not.

Why yes, I would start it over again. I might do some things differently. I would have started with a little bit more cash in my operating accounts. You know, I literally came into this, I put my money into my equipment and I had $4,000 in, in cash to start the business. And I probably would have put 20 or 30 thousand dollars in cash in there. And that way I had, I would have had a little bit more comfort, I would have marketed more. You know, I was, you know, last year I think I spent $6,000 on marketing. This year I bumped it up to $8,000 in marketing. That really is not a lot of money to market your business.

Yeah.

I would recommend other people, if they were to look at it, to look at it that way, get in, you know, your equipment for what you can afford, but make sure you have enough to, to truly fund the business.

Yeah.

And that was some of my, you know, pipe dream of first time entrepreneurship is, oh, it's going to grow, it's going to grow, it's going to grow. There is a certain reality that hits you in that process. I would certainly start it again. I would, you know, again potentially look at maintaining a full time job and hiring someone to do this and starting at that point and understanding maybe it's a loss leader for a little bit longer than it is, than it is a profit maker.

Yeah.

Because right now I have to look at how do I make profit first. You look at a lot of the big companies, the Amazons, that don't make profit for how many years. These major corporations, businesses, they've chosen that business model to grow the business and not make money. I have to look at it the opposite way.

What opportunities have you been saying no to like other businesses or like additional services that you still think are great opportunities.

I find myself saying no to a lot because I'm a dreamer. I dream a lot. Right now I'm still trying to figure out how to, whether it's worth getting into window washing and solar panel cleaning. I'm not quite seeing the profitability in that without having to again being another trash can cleaning business where you have to do hundreds of customers. I am doing power washing because that is a vertical that works within the equipment that I have. Power washing and house washing. I'm saying no to other maintenance projects. The homeowner says, oh, well, you do this? Well, do you do this? I'm saying no to a lot of that. Eventually I do see this being being somewhat of a bigger home care brand. I'm saying I've looked at, gosh, I've looked at so many ideas, whether it's ice machines or Christmas tree renting, where you plant them and replant them every year and bring them back. I've looked at, looked at doing the vertical horticultures in cities and cityscapes where people can come and learn. And also, you know, where you're already looking at areas that don't have access to the supermarkets and fresh foods and trying to figure out how to get know planting and healthy food into those areas. That undercoating of, of cars for those of us in the Rust Belt, you know it, my mind goes a mile a minute with those things. Unfortunately.

Never heard of that. Tell me about Christmas tree renting. What is that business?

I saw that somewhere. I saw an article about it where, you know, they, you don't cut down a tree. You're taking a live tree, you're taking with a root ball and all that and you're, you're renting it to someone in a, in their home. And then at the end of the season they give it back to you and you can get that same tree year over year over year. I did not grow up with that faith, but I saw my, you know, I saw some of my neighbors, they would buy a new tree every year and they would plant it along our property line and it became a border. But it was, for me, it was a neat story where they would take that tree and it would become part of their life. Obviously you have people who live in, in townhomes, condos that don't have that flexibility that we had growing up on two acres of land. So how do you give them an opportunity to get a fresh tree, not have to cut it down and then be able to know that they're providing well for the environment. So I saw an article about it and was reading and I said, you know, that sounds really cool. Obviously you have to have the land, the trees and.

Yeah, that is cool concept, though. I wonder if you could partner with a farm or something and manage all the logistics for them.

I like it. I might talk to one of my neighbors. Someone's going to spur me in that direction.

Yeah. That's a podcast for another day, but thanks for planting that seed. Pun intended.

I was going to say, is that.

Well, Jason, this was super good. I appreciate you sharing everything. I think people will be motivated by it and it will cause them to act just like you have acted. So, any other parting thoughts or.

Or.

Or where can we find you also?

Sure. So I'm on Facebook, Crystal Cleancans with a Z. Also on the web at www.crystallcleancans.com. and always welcome to chat and always welcome to talk about it. I think for me, it's been an experience and I've been open with my customers about that it being an experience. And I find my them reach out just the same. I'm happy to chat about it. The good, the bad and the ugly. And then back to talk about the good again. Because I truly think there's a lot of positives.

Yeah.

As I grow this business.

So you should definitely charge for your time if people reach out, wanting to pick your brain.

So I appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah. Okay, Jason, well, thank you for your time. This is great. Congratulations on building an awesome business, and I hope you grow up a hundred percent next year. Forget 75. Let's do 100.

I like. I like the way you think.

Yeah.

Thanks so much, Chris.

Yeah, no problem. See you later.

Appreciate it.

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