This Business Does $350K+... But is Drowning in Debt

Waking up every morning was just like, why am I doing this? We should be able to pay everything off and have a little bit left.

You're saying half of that though goes to her mom for the babysitting side of things?

Pretty much, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. That's where it starts to make a lot of sense. Like when you have, if you just look at that as an expense of the business, for example, you know, 50% immediately is going out the door. It's just going to be difficult to either a, you got to scale this and have a bunch of employees. And now she never sees the kids and that's not what we want. So like I would be a big fan of like, hey, especially also Ricardo. Cause like once you have her support, you'll feel better on the hauling side of the business to like just go all in on it. And so I can only imagine not like having the support of a spouse like on that front. And so I would just like if she, if that's what she wants and she's going to be able to support you more on the hauling side just from like an emotional perspective, like I would just do it like because right now the business, even at 350,000, with we knowing it can do 600, 700,000, we should be as focused on that. Especially because the cleaning thing is like not super profitable due to the fact that half the money goes out the door as soon as we start leaving the kids. And then secondly that she doesn't want to do it. And so like I think if I was you, you know, you know, very self aware of yourself to realize that, you know, quote laziness is what caused that issue in the past. And so like in order to be able to resolve that, it's going to be like we need to have the whole family being like, oh, the hauling business is where we're focusing our attention. And then you'll get more of buy in from her when she kind of like don't require that cleaning business to keep operating. And her, her also feeling like she's not doing a good job as a mother.

Yeah, yeah, we have that a lot.

So. So I think you're in the right direction there. Then it's a matter of like, hey, well then how do we scale up the hauling business so we can still pay the bills? Right. So right now how is there. Do you still have your brother running that as kind of like the general manager? What's the setup currently in the hauling business?

Oh yeah, so I have my general manager, which is my cousin. Cousin and then I'm basically back. Right now he's out medically. He's has some gout or some stuff. Yeah, gout. So he can't really walk much. So I'm thinking control the. We haven't really had much jobs. We're just kind of focusing on that big project that my brother partnered up with that other company. But. And then as far as financially right now, I just checked, we're about 10 grand into debt with credit cards. Then I have some invoices that are pending, which is about five grand. And then whatever I'm going to make out of this job, we should be able to pay everything off and have a little bit left. So that's where we're at financially. And then, yeah, last year this company, even without me being here, made just, just. It was 396, 396,000.

It's a good business, honestly. And the challenging part is it's less recurring. And that's why I know the inclination is like, hey, we go to cleaning. It's a little more st. But I think when it comes down to like, even at 400,000, let's say we, if we really spent our time, attention, the full family was behind this. If we can get to 6 or 700,000, I don't necessarily need you in the truck. I just need you fully into getting sales. Yeah, because that's the challenging part. With, with. Is it junk removal or is it hauling? Like what's kind of like the, the breakdown.

It's junk removal. So we do like demolition junk removal from like single item pickups to multiple or you know, acre clear outs.

Got it. And what percentage of that is residential? Like homeowners? What percentage of that is like say property managers? And what percentage of that is like commercial, say like renovation jobs or construction? Like contractors?

I would say, I don't know the exact percentage wise, but I would say like 80% of it is residential. And then we have about 20 commercial. And within between all those, you know, some customers handle their own remodel. So they'll have us come out and do the, the hauling for the remodel. You know, the construction debris or something. Sometimes it's the contractor calling us. But yeah, we have a few accounts with some property managers. There's one property manager that keeps us pretty busy, but they take about like 30 days plus to pay us. Pay.

Like 5, 6 grand.

Got it. Okay. And then what is, what's from your perspective? Like what's the type of job that comes in? You're like, ah, this Is a money maker. We get it. You know, they're occasionally come in but like we know we're gonna make money. Is that like when the contractor calls you? Is that when someone does a renovation? Like what size of job is that?

Honestly, it's gonna be like the house clear out. So people moving out, moving out, and then hoarder situations where it's just truckloads, truckloads, truckloads of stuff coming out. Because, you know, if we charge like right now my price is 875 for a full truckload on my 19 cubic yard truck. So if we're doing about say five or so, you know, it's a good chunk of change. And then with the dump fees and labor, I mean, we're still profiting. Yeah, a good chunk. I don't know exact number because you know, dump fees are very. How many people we bring and all that. So. But it still brings a nice piece of chunk of change.

Okay, all right. Because like my, my sort of thought is like, how do we spend more time going after those people and even in your website going after those, like from a messaging perspective, after house cleanouts and hoarders. Right. Like on your site, I actually like, I see junk removal, furniture removal, estate clear outs, mattress construction debris. Like I get there's a lot of different aspects, but if we can take 20% of what's currently making a big chunk of revenue and you know, you're making money on these things and just make that more of our headline, like on the trucks, et cetera. And that's kind of where my head went first, is this segment of the population, like hoarders, for example, are moving, move out. People are less price sensitive. They have to get done. They know it's a big item. They know it's a lot of cost. It's a, it's a big difference. It's not like someone's like, hey, pick up this one mattress for me as one, you know, little thing. And then the reason I'm saying this because now we can afford a higher customer acquisition. And I feel like that's the thing I'm trying to nail down is like, how do we actually spend money on Google where we're not spending $50 per lead and then we're doing a 100, $200 mattress removal. Right. We're just not going to be able to make money on those. So. Okay, so I would first look at like, how can we rebrand the business, Whether it be the website, even the logo potentially in terms of like, how do we target the customers that we know we make money on, that we have enough margin to actually advertise. Because in a model where there's not recurring revenue, I need to make sure I'm making that money back that I'm spending on ads. And that's many times the thing I see with junk removal businesses, they're paying between thirty and a hundred dollars customer acquisition cost on a job that might be 100 or 200 for a small little job.

Yeah, because, like, from the math I did in the last couple years, so last when I was running Google Ads, it was about 175 per customer, and then the job average was about 400, 450.

So, yeah, it's tough. It's tough because then you have that cost, then you immediately have, you know, direct labor and debris. And like, man, we are making no money. So, like, I know it might be even, like, I would rather you do $500,000 but be 70%, 80% house cleanups and hoarders, where we know we're making good money. We don't have to spend so much on marketing, because if we're spending 20, 25% of our revenue on marketing, like, it's gonna be a tough uphill battle.

Yeah, yeah. Because labor for last year, yeah, just labor alone was about 25%. Just a little over total advertising was just under 10%, and then disposal fees about 15%.

So, like, my thought is, can we rebrand around the most, you know, profitable services, which is house cleanups and hoarders? We, instead of having all those words underneath, we just target those. Like, most people figure out junk removal, they can get all this other stuff thrown in. But if we really make our, like, go to what we're known for, the hoarder. And you can make some cool ads around this, by the way, like on Facebook, for example, around hoarders. And you have like, tons of really good before and after photos versus, like, we will remove your mattress. No one, like, no one's going to repeat business that. And the other thing I would say is, like, how many people in your database right now, Ricardo?

You know, so, sure, I was gonna look into that, but we got super busy right after we had that mastermind. We had that big job we had that we're doing probably. And then just to clarify, just meanwhile, I looked this up. I had a list of questions. So. So basically, the house cleaning business just completely shut it down for now. Just given the.

Given the fact that we're. We're 50% taken out right off the Top because of the childcare and she doesn't want you to do it. Like, we're talking about $1,000 a month of actual profit and that's without paying someone else. Like, she's doing the labor to make that happen. And I think that if you just focus on the business and had her support, you'd make more than a thousand extra in profit a month. I know, I. I know. Like, though, like, when it's tight, it's like, man, we need $1,000 or $2,000 just to make it buy. But I genuinely believe. And you could even do this for Carly because she's going to want. This is just be like, hey, once we hit X amount in revenue in the business, we're going to take away the cleaning business. And then that way she's going to support you getting that level and then be relieved once she can get rid of the. So be like, hey, once we pay off the credit cards, once we have X amount in the bank, we're going to get rid of the clean business. Like, have you already talked to her about the taking away the clean business? Like, since our mastermind.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, I told him we had this meeting and you said completely shut it down. I was probably just going to start counseling the customers and. Yeah, because yeah, right now it's just not making sense. And you know, once you said that, I just started looking at all the cons, pros and cons, and there's more cons to it than pros. So. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think if I was you, I just tie it to a certain level of financial security and that you both are behind. Like, you both want the family to succeed. So, like, hey, once we can get the credit card paid off, hopefully after this job, and then once we get a little bit of padding in the bank, cleaning business is over. It's kaput. You could sub it out to someone else if you really want to, but, like, just get rid of the thing. Right? And she's going to be fully supportive of now the hauling business being able to provide for the family. She doesn't have to do the business. You're going to like, you going to work. What you call lazy, I call potentially unmotivated. And unmotivation can cause a lot by like, the person you love the most is not really supportive of what you're doing. And so I think you'll regain the motivation for the business when you have someone else. But, like, go for it. Like, kick it. Like, let's go. And so.

She can listen to this too and just be like, what is the dollar amount we both feel comfortable cutting the cleaning business? And then it's like all gas, no breaks to that point so that as soon as possible we can get rid of the cleaning business. And now we're focused back on the hauling company. And that's going to come a lot, in my opinion, to your confidence level in lead flow. Because big jobs like that you got. Now if we could get those all the time, like this becomes a no conversation.

That makes sense. Okay. And yeah. So back to the clients. We have about 3,024 clients in our database.

Let's go. So. So have you been emailing or texting those people on a regular basis?

I tried to, I tried to do email campaign or a text campaign email too, but a lot of them subscribed out and then some of them were like, hey, we moved out of state. Can you guys take up. Take us off your list. And I was supposed to but never did it. So that's why I haven't really pushed on it again. And I was looking into getting co pilot for the hauling because I was gonna get co pilot for the cleaning business. But I just need to know how to work the schedule on it, I guess would be the.

Yeah, the good news is like the text, you can go back, you know, spend an afternoon. Whoever wanted to opt out or said they didn't learn this cool. Take them out. Like what seems like a lot. Could be a hundred out of your 3,000 though that's 3%. Like I do not want to stop a really well, essentially free marketing channel to my best customers because 3% of my didn't like it. Or 3% of them it's not applicable to anymore. Well, I would be looking at like 97% of them didn't opt out and they're like, cool. That, that's a good, like great, great message. Like. So I, I would really lean into the fact you have 3000 contacts have already paid you money.

It's like, let's make sure people that, that booked estimates and we just, they stay in our database or people that booked online never, never heard back from them.

Let's. Let's say, let's say 3,000 people that have demonstrated a need. Let's say half of them have given you money like those. That's a really good market to go after versus cold audience traffic on Google and paying 150, $175 for a lead or like for a customer there.

Right.

So I would exhaust that a lot. I Would say on a monthly basis, like you got spring clean outs, you got end of like the school season. You have we're going back to school. So you have back to school sales. Like you just need to figure out for every single month what's the promotion based upon what you know is the demand of that season. And then we're going to text them and we're going to email them. And I believe that's where you turn a re reoccurring business like junk removal, which is intermittent but no schedule like, but it can be, it can happen more than one time. That's where you turn it into a more reoccurring business versus a one time job. And this is, this is the treadmill that so many junk removal businesses get on is spending money on one time jobs and never having any reoccurrence. And that might be once a year, but if you want a customer go from one time to once a year, we will double or triple the business.

That makes sense. Okay.

Like it's end of year, it's Thanksgiving. Like your, your family's coming for Thanksgiving. You got to clear out the house. Like there's so many areas of opportunity to just, just think about what is my customer currently facing. And then I'm messaging to the people who have already demonstrated the need and, or paid me money. And if you really want to get sophisticated, you would split those two audiences out. Okay. If they have a, if they've ever paid me money, I'm going to tag them this way. Right. If they've never paid me money or they don't have an estimates accepted, this would be a different, different segment. Maybe it's 1500 of each. Now you'd actually target them slightly different because to one audience they've already given you money, the other one like ghosted you or whatever. And then you might actually realize that oh, all the people that are like opting out are the people I've never actually done business for. They don't know who I am and like they're just gravy on top of the 1500 that I have done service for and are willing to get back into service with me.

Right. Okay. And then another thing I have too is the hauling company. I don't know how or why. I mean I kind of try to keep track of all the money coming out, but it just seems like sometimes I spend more than what I make. Sometimes just labor, credit cards, just odds and ends. And that's another reason I took off myself, like got a job because I felt like I was a problem, you know, I'd be in the office and, like, we don't have leads coming in. What can I do? Okay, let's go buy yard signs. Spend a thousand bucks on yard signs. Oh, okay, that didn't work. All right, now let's do door hangers. Buy 2500 door hangers. That's not working. Let's do thumbtack. Let's pay. You know, thumbtack was, like, super expensive. Think it was like 80 a lead. Then I tried Angie's List, and, you know, I tried. When I was in the office, I was just trying throwing a bunch of money at stuff. But I don't want to go back to that because I got in depth. One of the years that we were in business pretty bad. I was like, 30, 30, 40 grand in debt and finally got out of that. Now I have a little cushion room. Personal. Me and my wife saved money. We have a little cushion room. But now I'm scared to spend that money and go back to where I was. You know, that's one of my huge things is like, how can I make it so I don't spend so much money?

Yeah, like. Like, leads will solve this problem. You getting so many leads where, like, I'm not sitting in the office. I either have to get another truck or, like, I have to go out and work on the weekends to get all these leads taken care of. And so instead of focusing on like. Like, the reason that we always default to get door ha or get yard times because they just throw money at it, is, like, the simplest, laziest way to do it, right? What takes more, which is much more difficult, is like, okay, what's a thoughtful process that I can use on a monthly basis to promote an offer to my customer based upon their needs? Now I just really get creative. But cool thing is, you can ask ChatGPT this. You can just be like, hey, give me 12 promotional offers for junk removal in this market. These are my services. You know, give me one for an email and text for every single month of the year. It'll do this for you, right? So, like, but that takes a little more creativity than just, like, oh, yeah, I'll, you know, give my credit card to, you know, angios or whatever. So I. I also think, like, you can look at your website, like, where, When. When you get your leads right now, Ricardo, what percent of them come to your website versus, like, calling you?

I'd probably say 80, 95% call and very little, because we're doing now.

We.

We kind of Slowed down on the Google Ads and we focus more on the Google local ads. So usually they're just calling. And then right now I stopped all ads with Yelp because I was spending about 3 to 4 grand and wasn't even. I barely cover. Sometimes wouldn't even cover the cost of the Yelp ads.

Yeah. So, like, I think that if you lean on local services because we know at least it works, it's bringing the phone calls and, you know, it's not a band and something that's working and makes decent sense financially, then we focus on text and email blast to existing customers and our database. And then the next thing I would say is those text messages are likely going to be pushing them to your website to book now. Right. Like, I really like the fact that you can book now with, with your website. I think that we could take the site though, and increase the conversion dramatically just by tweaking a few. Like, do you. Do you do the site yourself?

No, I had one of my friends, cousins do it.

Cool. Are they available to like, make some tweaks? If you ask them to, Sometimes they're just.

I know he was not sure if he's still at school or he's got a job now, so he might be able to do it. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. A couple things on this site I think could really improve the conversion. And so I'm just looking at it now on mobile. I like that the book now is up top. Very good. Yeah. Like, are you open to changing the.

Name, the company name Responsive? Yeah.

Never really thought about it. But why?

Okay, mostly because, like, so, for example, 1-800-got junk is obviously the leader in the industry. And it's in part because, like, you can remember it very easily.

Responsive. Being that this is like an action, like, responsive. I'm responsive. I'm trying to think about how we can, like, go after more house cleanouts and hoarders. Like, like something like, something around hoarders could be interesting because hauling, like. So when you say hauling, like, that's why I immediately asked, like, was this junk removal or is this a trucking business? Right. And so I'm not saying we should do that, but I think that even, even the logo with the three arrows says to me, like, recycling. So I'm a little confused if I just. I look at just the logo of like, is this a trash removal business? Is this a recycling business? Is this a trucking business or is it a junk removal business? Right. So, like, I, for example, would be like a huge fan of some, like, hoarders junk removal. Like, okay, I'm going after my target audience, which is my people that are hoarders. Also, you can make fun of it too, right? Like, hey, there's a little bit of hoarder in everyone, right? Like, we all have a little bit of hoarder in us. Like, you could. You could make it so it's not just the hoarders. So it's. But it's junk removal, but then it's also branded to your most ideal customer that you make the most money on. And so that would be like a longer lift. And I don't know if you're. If you're the person in your site could help you kind of make that happen. But, like, what's nice is you haven't wrapped your trucks. Like, you'd really just have to change the sign and your website and you could immediately. And even your, like, dba, you could just change the DBA and your entity to, like, responsive hauling DBA quarters. Junk removal. I mean, I'm just making stuff up. Don't. Don't use this verbatim. I'm just saying. I think that I'm a little confused by the branding. And I also think, like, just from the website perspective, I really like the book now thing. I think that could be really highlighted even more. So and like, book us now and get rid of the. Get your free estimate. Like, how often do you get an estimate versus the booking?

We get a lot of estimates that we have to do because that's usually what we go for. We usually say, oh, let's book the estimate. Then we'll, you know, give you the price. We'll go take care of it from there.

Okay. And. And how many. What's your close ratio usually? Like 30, 50%? What is it usually?

Well, we're there on site. It tends to be. I haven't kept track of that.

Oh, I see. So they'll call in a lot of times and over the phone, you'll basically close them. Estimate.

Yeah, if we can. If not.

I see. So call the number below for a free junk removal estimate. Got it.

Okay. Okay. Can you still hear me there?

Yep, I can hear you. Okay.

Perfect. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, so, yeah, a lot of people call. We'll give them that. If they have, like, a single item, then we'll give them a price right then and there. But usually if it's like, oh, we have junk, you know, we have junk in our backyard, or this and that, then we'll let them know that, hey, we have to come out and Take a look at it in person, then give you the price. And then if you agree to the price, we'll go ahead and get. Get it taken care of right then and there.

Got it.

Okay, cool.

All right. So it's not like you're visiting their house as much. Okay. All right. Yeah. Like, I think. I think a rebrand I would be a fan of. I think it would help with your conversion. I think you get more of the right customers. But I know that's a big lift, so I'm not going to push you in that direction because, you know, it requires a whole new site, you know, changing the signage out, et cetera. But it might be just something to think about.

Yeah, I mean, like I said, I never really thought about it. I was that, you know, because a lot of customers are like, we need it right now. We need this. Just gone right now. Can you come right now? Can you come today? I had somebody cancel or never showed up. Can you come take care of it? But that's kind of why I got into that name, the Responsiveness. Just kind of like, hey, we're real quick. We're the first ones there. Call us. We'll take care of it right away when you need it. We're here to work on your schedule. Kind of the play I had with. With the. With that name.

Yeah. Like, I think if I was to go one degree less, instead of call it like Changing Responsive, then I would just probably call it Responsive Junk Removal and change the logo to something that's reflective of that. Because that, that that symbol is used for recycling a lot. So I didn't know, like, is this a trash. Trash company? Is this a recycling company? Is this a trucking company? It can be confusing. And these are the little things that, like, when someone's quickly scanning a site, the first thing they're like, is this even for me? Right.

And then for sars, legal wise, if I change it to Responsive Junk Removal, would that be. You said just change it to a dba.

You just add a dba. So it could be like Responsive Junk, Responsive Hauling, llc, dba, Responsive Junk Removal. Yeah.

Okay.

And then, and then you could even just like, so like, you have items we can take, how we work, et cetera. I would definitely make a page on your site that is like Responsive Hauling, or if you change the URL or not, doesn't matter. Responsive Hauling, dot com orders and another one, like slash.

Was it House Cleanouts? Like, I would try to go after those keywords by using another page on the site that actually they're going to be searching. Like when they search.

I think we do have that. Yeah, I think we do have that page. There, there should be. I know I pretty specifically told them.

Items we take, it might just be.

A little hard to find. Let me see here again.

Services. Oh, I see. I see more under more. There it is. Office house, clean out. Got it. Oh, you do dumpster. Do you do dumpster rentals too?

Yeah.

Oh really?

We have. So I have one, the 19. I have the 19 cubic yard truck. That's a dump truck. And then I. Right after that I bought another Isuzu. But it's a switch and go. But the biggest box I have is a 4, 17 cubic yard that's 14ft long, 8 foot wide, 4 foot tall. So a lot of customers. When we first got it, we were renting them out a lot. But now dump the rental got so competitive, especially with pricing and all that. Because I charge 550 for mine. Includes a ton and a half of weight. Anything over that is 200 bucks a ton. So there's a lot of other competitors or bigger companies with the big, you know, 60, 000 pound trucks or sticker limit. And they're charging about 800 bucks to a thousand bucks for like a 40 yarder, you know, includes three tons. So it makes more sense for them to go with that one. The reason we're renting ours out was they're really small, compact, we could squeeze them in into anywhere. So yeah, that was kind of what we did with. With the dumpster rentals there.

What percentage of revenue. What percentage of revenue is the dumpster dumpster rental?

Not much. Probably like 5, 10%. Like I don't keep track of all the numbers. I just kind of do the jobs as they go. But yeah, not a big percentage.

Okay. Yeah, because it would be interesting to see if we should even make a different site for that like responsive dumpster or something like that.

I thought about that.

If it's even worth it, if it's 5 to 10% of revenue, maybe we just abandon this altogether and we take that second truck and grow. We're using junk removal, right?

Yeah, that's exactly what my plan was for now I actually got a next week I have an appointment with a welder to come weld the toolbox. Because I've had the toolbox for years and never got it installed. Just again, procrastinating, unmotivated and yeah, because sometimes we like if our truck's completely full or out of service, like you know, getting maintenance done, brakes Done or whatever. We'll use that one for the junk removal. But I never carry any tools in it. So we have to lug all the bags because we use a lot of drills, sawzalls, in case we need to take stuff apart couches or whatever. So we'll lug all the stuff in the cab with us including the tarps. And once we're done dumping, especially when it's raining, you know, it gets all muddy. But yeah, that is what, what my plan for now was because I already have one truck pretty much full time with my general manager and the other guy. So have them do their own route, whatever extra jobs come in. Then I start taking care of on my own until I'm able to and then have to hire another person to help me out once we start getting that marketing up again. Especially right now during our businesses and season coming out.

Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm a fan. I'm a fan. I think if I have a 10% revenue I would be cutting it too. Kind of like the cleaning thing. Just focus on, on if you have the second truck and you know you can fill it eventually with junk removal which is the higher margin stuff then I, I agree. I agree 100. So yeah, I know I've been talking.

Oh, you only have two. Okay.

Which is always helpful. I was thinking Ricardo, because what you could do use that truck for is for example, instead of getting a third truck down the road, if you just drop one of the dumpsters, you have your crew load the thing up. You could technically kind of do two job sites.

So that's exactly what we do. We have like the larger jobs. So we'll, we'll go out, drop one off while the team loads up the dump truck and they'll load that, the dumpster up. So by the time I come back, that dumpster tool, drop off that one. Then the dump trucks come in. So we just kind of keep the ball rolling if it's paid for them. But yeah, so that's definitely the plan is and that's what we use them for. So yeah, I guess, I guess I'm doing good on that. So yeah questions I have is like how can I be number one in marketing? So I've done Google, I've tried to max out all. But you know, we have like a two thousand dollar a day budget, you know, but it never spends that much. It usually used to spend like 4 to 500 bucks a day. And that's when we're, that's when we're doing the 7,806to $700,000 a year. How can I be number one? The competitor my brother's working with, if you want to look them up, it's mix it. So it's N I x X I T junk removal dot com. They're, they're staying pretty busy. We're working with them. And the owner of that company, you know, he's on the truck. He's super motivated. Like you. You know, I'm like, I'm glad I'm, I'm part of this job site because I'm like, I'm watching how everything works. They're. They're making money. The way they handle calls, the way he does it sells, he's just very straightforward. Me, when I go do my, my sales or estimates, I'm kind of like, you know, I think it's about a quarter load.

So.

Yeah, yeah, it's a quarter load. If ends up being less, I'll charge you less. You know, he's just kind of like, oh, you know, for what I charge record, he'd probably be like, hey, it's half a truck. It's going to be this much. And this is why you want to go for it or not, you know, because I heard him talk to this customer and he's just really straightforward. You know, I guess when he landed this huge job, because the job, it's like a 300, 000 job they're doing, he was in contact with the realtor and then, you know, kind of the realtor was the middleman, I guess. He told him straight up, just like, hey, are you the decision maker? No, I'm not. That's the owner. Okay. I didn't get in contact with the decision maker if not, I'm not giving you a price. I'm like, wow. Like, I, I wouldn't have the, the, the nerve to, you know, just kind of go out. Especially if it's a realtor I'd like to work with and stuff like that. I try to be professional, respectful, but he's just like, I got to talk to him and that's it. Like, you're out of the pictures for now, and so we need you. And, you know, I know that's one of like the grand cardone sales. Like, he's just like, you got to get to the decision maker and that's it. Don't talk to the middleman. But so I'm learning a lot. But, you know, they're really good at marketing, and I'm just. From the week we've been there, they've already Landed like two or three quarterhouse or you know, large clear outs, you know like four or five six grand job. I'm like how my phone's not ringing, we're not getting any jobs. I'm like what am I doing wrong compared to them? You know I mean they're a bigger company, they have a lot more money. You know I'm working with little to no capital. You know they have, it's him, his wife and another manager he has, they've all invested money but they're, they're super big on, on marketing. So I want to see how can I compete with them, what can I change, you know, stuff like that. What can I do to get more jobs and you know, just get more jobs and being Mark, you know, be number one in marketing.

Yeah like they have several things thousand on their website but also even like their Google listing they have 1500 reviews right.

So you know from that after us.

Right. It's tough to compete with but like they always have things dialed in with like setting automations for getting reviews. I imagine they ask for reviews the cut when they're on the job site. They also have products inside of their Google listing that you can actually buy directly from there. So you could create products inside of there. So they're really optimizing their Google listing. The first thing, the next thing I would say is like I think you can double the business just by focusing on your 3,000 people in your database. It's just a function of how do we get someone to come back again. Because what's happening is someone's using your service two years later they need another service around junk removal and they're just searching junk removal in your area and they're getting nixit. Right. So because you're not top of mind, you haven't contacted them for two years. Like we just need to stay top of mind for someone that is only going to think about junk removal once a year, maybe once every two years.

Okay. So I guess changing the name to responsive junk remote would be a big help.

I think, I think it'd be clear. Like I think you have more clarity on what you even do. That'd be like the first step. Then if you can change even just that logo, that would be another thing I'd potentially think about. And then do you take it to the next level and actually change it to going after orders like that seems to be the thing that is 10x the size job that you're getting from Google that is a four or five hundred dollars job. Right. So Like, I would rather go for the 3, 4, $5,000 jobs even if I get half as many leads, but they're 10x the size and all more profitable. I can also spend a lot more on ads when my average ticket is 3, 4 grand versus 400.

Yeah, because the thing is, the reason I haven't really focused on that was because I'm always, I guess I was always negative and like, oh, there's not enough work for everybody. You know, they. Too much competition, somebody's going to outbid us, stuff like that. But now, like I said now with these guys, they're, they're just, I mean, they're expensive. You know, they have smaller trucks, they're charging a little cheaper than we are. But you know, when we break it down, we're cheaper in the long run. But you know, for them, they have smaller trucks, but, but yeah, it's opening my eyes and I'm being more positive than work out there. I just have to be able to get it. Okay, so.

And sometimes like a specialist makes more money. Right? So if you're like, where are the, the pros for, for hoarders? Like, if I have, if I, if I know my parents passed away and their house is full of junk, like, am I going to call responsive hauling or am I going to call hoarders junk removal? Right. I'm going to call junk the hoarders junk removal because it's screaming to me like, this is what you need. And if you, if you deal with someone like that, they're in three, four of these hoarder houses every day or week or whatever, you don't need even that many. And I believe that your hoarders junk removal, for example, would outperform Nixit because nixit is still even more broad. Like if, you know all your money is coming from these, this segment, we just go all in on it, including, you know, potentially changing the name. But like, I think in terms of like fast fixes, I would at least go responsive junk removal and change that circular looking to something else.

Okay. Yeah, because my thing was like, if I change it to like order or something similar to that, would I potentially lose all the smaller clients? Like the minimum pickups? You know, like again, the, the average still tickets like about a third of a load, so usually a quarter load. But it all evens out with, you know, the full loads and stuff like that. With the may change a name change like that, would I potentially lose a lot of the other customers, you think or.

I think so, yes, you would probably lose out on the 3, 400 jobs. But again, if we're paying 175 to Google, we can't make sense of those jobs anyways. And so the reason why someone like Nixit has made made sense of this is because they can still spend. They probably don't do any better marketing than you. Let's assume their cost per lead is like the exact same, but because their prices are higher and they're going after that target demo of like these hoarder houses, they're getting these big jobs like the one that you're doing now, like, these are massive jobs. They're winning those because speaking to the audience much in a much more direct fashion, like niching down, like when you say responsive hauling, you basically saying, we will haul anything. And even on the side of your truck, like when you say that many things like, oh, they will haul anything versus I need someone to clean up my hoarder house. I'm going to go to hoarder's junk removal and I'm willing to pay far more because I believe they're going to serve me. So yes, I believe you will get less leads if you go from responsive hauling to hoarder junk removal. I do believe that. But I believe that even if you cut your number of leads by 30% and you lost all those 300, $400 jobs, you would double or triple the amount of hoarder houses that you get. And you've been, you've shown that just the amount of hoarder houses that they're getting, if you could just get those, let alone anything else, and you would be set. So there's enough work there. And I believe that if we just focused on them, we'd actually get them away from nixit, because I don't believe you're going to be able to compete with Nixit in terms of all of junk removal. They have systems dialed, they have more capital, they have a lot more infrastructure, they have five times as many reviews as you. It's gonna be tough. So why not just take one segment that you know is most profitable and just laser in on those people?

Okay. All right.

And I do believe you can get other jobs versus by the way you message it, right? It's like in your marketing, like when you get to your site, it's like the tagline so like all have a little hoarder inside of us, right? Like things like that, can they kind of make it funny? It makes it very, very easy to, to know what you do. Like, I can read hoarders dunk removal and immediately know what you do. And if someone doesn't know what, what you do, they have no ability to even buy from you because they don't know whether or not you serve their need.

Right. I guess just market to like. Okay, so I guess focus on, focus most of our marketing towards that.

I would, I would do that. I would do that. And I think what's really good, Ricardo, is you've demonstrated by working with another company that there's enough of those hoarder houses and house cleanouts to make a business. So in the past you might have said, hey, I don't know if there's going to be enough of those leads. We've demonstrated now that there are enough. It's just a matter of us going and getting them.

Okay. And then next question would be, how do I hire people for, how do I find people for like Facebook ads and SEO, stuff like that? Because I don't do any SEO in my company and I know it's a big help for a lot of businesses, but I just can't come up with the reason to spend. You know, I've gotten calls for like 700 bucks a month and it's going to take six months to start working. And I don't really know if I could trust these people that I'm contacting. How can I find people to actually help?

Yeah, like the biggest thing I would say, if you're going to do it, is be careful of someone that's going to lock you in a contract. Because those are, those are usually the scummy ones. Because this is the thing, if their SEO is doing really good, you will not want to leave, you know, 500 or 700amonth. You're like, who cares? They're bringing, they doubled my number of leads. It's like this is like even we do this at home service web design. And like we do it where you could leave after one month. And we do that because if we're not going to get you leads, you should just leave. But that would be my only caveat. Like, if you're going to go out and look for someone to do it, just be careful. Like you got to sign a three year contract and they'll try to sell you. And like, it takes six months. Yes, it takes six months. But if after six months you haven't seen results, you need to, you need to bail. And so that's the only thing I would be kind of wary of. And it doesn't cost more than a thousand. Like if someone's charging more 1000 I would be very wary. Like, I know what it costs because we charge 499. So like if they're too much more than 700 and they're asking for contracts of a year, two years, three years, I've seen somewhat five years now. Just, just be wary of them.

Okay. And you get to SEO, but just for like landscapers.

Right? No home service Web design does for all home services. So about a third of our sites are. So if you go on there, I think we actually have a junk remote on our work page. You can see some of them. I don't know if we have the junk removal ones on there, but there's at least four or five. Like plumbing, we do H Vac, we do a bunch of different home service stuff.

Okay.

I would, I would probably only use a service like ours if you're going to actually rebrand. So like, because we will do everything from scratch. Like, we would do the logo for you, we would do the domain like we do everything. If you're going to go that route, then use someone like us. If you, if you're just like, hey, take my current site, make tweak the logo, just the circle thing and responsive junk removal and increase SEO, I don't think you should be paying more than $300 a month for that. Maybe 400. But like, if you're going to go full site redesign of rebranding, something like us might be helpful. But you can talk to the team too and just like, you just get some ideas because we'll look at this site and give you like, he, here's the first five things we'd be doing and you could even just take that from their call and then they go take it to someone and try to get cheaper if needs be.

Okay. All right. And then are like local networking groups or events worth the time spent on them? Because I know, like Nick said, they do that a lot. They're like very big on community in their city. Are those worth it in Your opinion? Like BNI's Chamber of Commerce and all that.

I've seen some, some like very localized groups work. The vast majority ones I have, have attended. They don't. And when I say work, will I get a lead or two? Yes. But my question is always if I would have spent that time doing something else in the business, like optimizing my website or just fall. Like, I always get a crack of when people are going to three hour BNI meetings and they're not following up in their estimates. Like, look, if you just spent an hour pulling all the estimates that you gave out this past week, you would have closed three or four jobs. And so I, I look at it as like it is not the lowest hanging fruit. Like, if I, if I, if I went, you know, to your business, I would be like, okay, have we text everyone, have we emailed everyone, have we followed up on every single estimate until they said no? And if not, then why are we going after any cold traffic, whether that be bni, Facebook, Google? Like we should not spending a single dollar if we're not doing the free forms of marketing.

Right.

I also think that your hoarders, Hoarders Halt junk removal would do great on social media just because the name and like, if you do a cool, funny little logo, it's gonna crush on local Facebook groups.

So. All right, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, so I'm worried on that idea, but I'm gonna put some thought into it. But yeah, definitely, I'll definitely do the name change logo because I did want to change the logo too, so that was already mine.

That'd be a good step, right? Just take that first step and see how people react. And I think if you see a good change, maybe then what you could do is build the hoarder site separately and be like, okay, let's kind of test it out, roll it. I don't want to completely change everything right away. I get it.

Right.

But I think you'll get more confidence just by changing the logo and response of hauling, going to response of junk removal. That alone will be, I think, helpful.

Okay, and then what can I do during the slow season? Because we usually do right now, on average, we're doing about 40 grand a month. Then for basically anywhere from like November, December all the way to basically now, just right before May, we're only doing about 15 to 20 grand a month. So just enough to pay all our bills, our guys, and just stay alive, basically. Not including our, you know, something we're losing because we're paying advertising, stuff like that. We're having bad months. Like this April was horrible. We did about 25, I think, and we ended up losing like about six grand. So how, how can, what can I do? Because we still stay busy. Like some, some December past few years we've done like big quarter clearouts or big house clear out where puts us on the green or, you know, we'll make five, ten grand profit. But what can I do during a slow season to market to those type of customers or should I do, you know, kind of what, I guess what kind of what do you suggest to do? I know for like landscaping, it completely shuts down to you to just doing the lights. What do you think I could do? Should I up my marketing? Obviously contact the current, current client list I have right now, so that might help out. But is there anything else I could do?

Yeah, I do think part of this is the messaging, the type of customer you're going after. Like by saying we're doing hauling, the challenging part that most people think about hauling. During the spring season, when I go after something like hoarders, people are dying and moving throughout the entire year. And so I do believe that that shift in the messaging, the marketing or the branding would help somewhat. I do believe that like when there's a ton of leads pouring in, you're not going to send a text message because like you're already drowning in work. But what we save our text and our emails for is the season when it's slower. But there's absolutely no reason why you can't have a early November saying, hey, is your family coming in town? And here's the offer. And you make an offer designated around Thanksgiving. And then after Thanksgiving, boom, same thing for Christmas, January, okay, We're going to haul out their Christmas tree, all of their boxes, and you're going to have pictures of all this stuff overflowing from their Christmas party. Like, you're just going to have to think about what's the offer for every single season. Because the reason is right now you're leaning so much on intent based marketing, which is people searching on Google for you. You're going to have to flip this to where now when they're not thinking about you, you say, hey, I have an I have something to offer. And that's going to come to the text and the email. But you're going to have to get creative. Like, how do you bundle this up? Right? How do you actually create packages that are appealing to people in things they're not thinking about things they're like, right? So it just, we've got to create the demand because right now you are, you are waiting on people searching a certain keyword. And that's why even like to you, like, it's like, oh, I got to do SEO. I agree. If people are trying to find you, I'm trying to take how the people are already in my ecosystem. I can reach out to them anytime and create. But I've got to create demand by giving an offer. And so I would create a very funny, like a great package name around Thanksgiving and then Christmas and Then New Year's and then like spring cleaning season. And. And so one thing I will say, Ricardo, I'll. I don't want to, like, I don't want to pitch home services, home service regimen. But what I will do this is this because I think I can convince you on the horror thing if you just see enough leads. And so I want to do is I want to build the site for you for free for six months. And so we will build it out completely. If you're like, after six months, it's not doing great, just can it. Like, I have no hard feelings whatsoever. My only ask is that you just work with the team when they ask you questions around, like what's your service area? You know, what kind of colors do you like? Because they're going to build this thing from scratch and they're going to build it for something like if you can get a good domain like hoarders.com or whatever. Like if you can get that hoarder junk removal and then really go after hoarders. And I think if you do it for six months, you'll be, you'll see like, oh, like there's a lot of traffic here and this is now bringing me leads that I don't have to pay $175 and get a 300, 400 job. Like, you don't want those customers. Like, I'm trying to get away from them. And those are also the ones that are most seasonal. They're the people that are always in the spring. You got this big build up. I'm going after the fact that people die all the time and people move all the time. That's a consistent throughout the year there'll be ebbs and flows and obviously spring will still be higher. But I know that I can create offers during November, during December. Like those are great seasons to target people. Their gatherings, their parties. People are coming in, their families coming in town. It's just a matter of packaging it correctly.

Okay, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Because my dad, he, he's like very local. He does all the work himself. So he, he does a lot of jobs for like retirement homes. So when people pass away, the retirement home keeps his number. And when those families come, like, hey, you know, families are coming out of state to handle their parents death and, and their stuff. And they're just like, hey, you know, call seven cities, call them. They take care of pretty much everybody here. You know, once people pass away.

Totally. And the thing is that then you start asking, hey, how do I do more business to business so for example, instead of going to bni, I would be like, okay, I'm going to contact every mortician, I'm going to contact every cemetery. Because when people pass away, they also need my services. And to that, to that funeral director, for example, they are a wealth of knowledge to the person that is trying to deal with all this stuff for the first time. If you can name, they always say, go contact quarters, dunk removal. They got you taken care of and you create packages around these type of life events. And also people are very price insensitive around that moment. Like they're not like, oh is it $5 or $10? Like we gotta get this taken care of. Can you be there tomorrow? Yeah, I, I believe your time will be better spent instead of going to a BNI event where there's a whole bunch of random people that are also trying to sell their stuff, I'd be spending my time going knocking on doors of every single funeral home director. And you know, all of these places where, you know these families are coming and they need your services.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Okay, well, anything else, Ricardo, before we wrap up, I can help with.

No, no, no, my time's up. So I have one question, but to kind of answer the same thing. So. Okay.

Yeah, okay. Okay, cool. So I think like immediate steps, I think we can change the logo, change responsive junk removal pretty easily on the website just to create a little bit more cohesiveness so customers know what's going on. That's pretty easy. The text and email to existing customers probably the highest priority. I would Talk to chat DBT for 20, 30 minutes about like create me an email for every month of the year. Make it around this messaging. Do same thing for text messages. I would be like after this big job, that'd be the first test. And it's spring. Like you're in the middle of your season. It'd be like spring cleaning up. So like spring, you know, get your spring cleaning done. Here's our offer. You create some of the offer, whether you percentage off or you get to a full truck and you get a percentage off or whatever it is and then just create those for every single month. That's another the second thing. And then the third thing is like very much up to you. I don't want to enforce this, but like I would just say like consider going more niche and going after the hoarder houses with your branding. And so like I will also, when I send you the recording, I will just introduce you to Tori. And if you want to have them build it and have it for free. 6 months. Great try it out. I just think that you will be able to get 50 to 60% of the currently customers going to nixit. And if you can just get those hoarder people coming to you and we're getting three, four grand per job, you can. I would be like go spend more money on Google because now $175 on a 3, 4 $5,000 job. I'm cool with that.

Okay. Yeah, I'm definitely gonna do the brand new. So basically would just be the website Google basically everywhere I advertise and then just do the DBA website. I would have to get a new domain. Let's see.

Yeah.

No, no, I don't know. Never thought about the domain. But okay, I'll look for that right now and then yeah I'll probably take you up on that six months and then probably see look, look for a domain similar to that. So someone with the word play and then kind of go from there and.

Then probably Tori and the team will walk you through that part too. So don't worry too much about the domain. Like I kind of want that to like built for you. You're gonna like oh this is super cool. I just want that to be all surprise and delight. Don't stress about that. I really want you to focus on the current business and like just optimizing that around existing customers. The logo and the name of the business getting the dba. Just focus on those things for now and like that first day after that big job is done immediately go into. Let's really focus on upselling and cross selling our database. I think you'll be amazed if we just create a good packaged offer around spring cleanups.

Okay. And then copilot kind of makes it super easy for. For me to do all that with the current client list I have right where I could just send out everything automatic and kind of set up the like if I talk to chat gbt I have. Excuse me all these templates done. I could just implement them and just kind of leave it and forget about it and it'll just send them out automatically. Email and and yeah like what do.

You use now right now? Do you mailchimp or what are you using now to send out text to customers?

I don't. I was using. I found different apps that I would use and they all gave me different numbers and so right now we just use our workies for our CRM or you know, scheduling and all that. But we don't. It's really A little difficult to use and kind of hard to get a hold of somebody. So, yeah, that's. Yeah, we haven't really. I've done it. I've done it through mailchimp. But yeah, group. Just different odd apps.

Yeah, okay. Like, you know, yes, Copilot can do it. It does the bulk text and the bulk email. You look at 279amonth though. So, like, you'd have to see, okay, is it worth that? Like, if you put 3,000 customers into Mailchimp, for example, you're looking at probably 150 to 200. So a little bit cheaper, but it's not going to do the CRM part. So, like, you know, just check all I care, Message your customers email and text. So whether it be Copilot or mailchimp, I don't really care. Just make sure we get the customers messaged. I think if you're gonna. If you're considering switching away from workies, then Copilot makes sense because it does the CRM aspect as well, like all the invoicing and estimates and all that rest of it. But if you like workiz, you could potentially get away with something like mailchimp, that's a little bit cheaper. If you're. If you have 3,000 contacts, it might be about 200 for texting and emailing. But, like, just look at those. But the bottom line is we gotta figure out a way to message those three. Like, the 3,000 customers is your gold mine. Like my, my locations, we don't market. We just simply are. Like, when we need jobs, we text our customers and we email them, and we're gonna get 30 to 50 new jobs every time we do that. And so I want that to be the focus because if I could just put all the money you're spending on marketing right now into your pocket, you'd be profitable.

And.

And furthermore, you get less anxious because you're not at the whim of spending more money on ads. You know that when you send a text out that's well done for an offer around a certain season that you'll get X amount of leads. Like, it becomes like very much dependable.

Okay. And does mailchimp offer us text message campaigns too, or.

They do. Yep, they do.

Oh, okay.

Yep, they do. And so you're probably looking around, if I had to guess, 150 to 200amonth to do text and email to 3,000 people if you just do Mailchimp. So if you like Workiz, like the CRM is working great for you, then just do Mailchimp. If you're like workies don't like it, then I'd consider copilot to get all of it in one thing.

Okay, and then so you said it's about 499 for the SEO as well, right? Through you guys.

Yeah, but let me connect with Tori and then what he'll do, Ricardo, is first off, he'll look at your site and just give you like, hey, low hanging fruit. Do these five things. It'll make your site better. And then what I'll have them do is like build you the kind of the rebranded version and that'll be free and for six months. And then you can just assess like if it's not working for you, please just can the thing. I don't. I don't care. I just want to you to see it and see what the potential of a site that is built from the ground up on that brand, going after that niche customer. I think you'll be surprised. And then you'll be like, okay, is it now worth actually switching my Google listing to over to the new site and changing my brand, my name, etc. We can make that decision for six months down the road.

Okay, perfect.

All right, Ricardo, we'll stay in touch. Best of luck to you, brother.

Thank you. Appreciate it.