Latest / Mostly Middle Tennessee Business Podcast / College Student to Entrepreneur w/ Dan DeGiulio :: Ep 244 Mostly Middle Tennessee Business Podcast

Transcript

College Student to Entrepreneur w/ Dan DeGiulio :: Ep 244 Mostly Middle Tennessee Business Podcast · Mostly Middle Tennessee Business Podcast

• 0:00
  Unknown: Own, actually, before I do that.
• 0:09
  Okay, so I'm going to change the date on this to the 14th good
• 0:15
  all inputs round.
• 0:19
  That'll be a second recording. Yeah, ready, ready
• 0:23
  to go. Got too close for the bargain.
• 0:27
  This is the mostly Middle Tennessee business podcast, a
• 0:31
  podcast about Middle Tennessee business owners and
• 0:34
  professionals,
• 0:36
  mostly. So
• 0:37
  what social stigma does society need to get over. That's a tough
• 0:46
  one. Come on. Now, this is the kind of stuff we start out with.
• 0:50
  Yep,
• 0:50
  I'm gonna have to go with the phones. You think so I'm gonna
• 0:53
  have to go with phones. You don't like phones. I don't. I
• 0:56
  just, you know, if you walk in, there's nothing better than
• 0:59
  physically shaking the hand of someone and looking at my eye
• 1:01
  and start talking. You
• 1:02
  know, you're too young to be thinking that, but it's
• 1:04
  refreshing to hear that. So those you guys tuning in, this
• 1:08
  is Dan degiulio that I have on the podcast today. He is the
• 1:12
  owner, the CEO of junk remedy. Is it junk remedy solutions?
• 1:16
  Junk remedy is junk remedy, junk remedy. So if you need to be
• 1:19
  remediated, which is the is that the root word of remedy all
• 1:25
  your junk removal needs, that's
• 1:27
  right, of junk that you have stored up. And maybe you're kind
• 1:31
  of a hoarder or something like that. I can only imagine the
• 1:33
  stories you have. Wouldn't breathe it got it. We're gonna
• 1:37
  be talking to Dan today. He's actually a vivacious character.
• 1:40
  He's a fellow BNI. Er, you've heard me talk about BNI before
• 1:43
  on the podcast. We're in the Wilco chapter together. Anybody
• 1:47
  who's listening, if you're in the area and you want to check
• 1:49
  out a BNI chapter, let me know. We'll send out an invite. We'll
• 1:53
  get you all situated. We're there every Wednesday from seven
• 1:56
  ish to nine or so, and that's how Dan and I met, the best
• 2:00
  meeting of your week. That's right. Bring that mic a little
• 2:03
  closer. We want to hear what you have to say, buddy. So want to
• 2:07
  get into all the different things, your background and
• 2:09
  stuff and how you got into it. But that was a really quick
• 2:14
  answer. Bones, because you're still in your 20s. If I
• 2:18
  24 Yeah, you're young. I think that the biggest thing is, you
• 2:21
  know, if I'm, do you hate being called Young? I'm sorry, you
• 2:24
  know, not really. I think I like it in the business standpoint.
• 2:28
  When, I mean, I have a lot of people ask me, you know, Are you
• 2:31
  the owner of this branch here? And I say, yes. They go, how?
• 2:33
  How old are you? You could be my grandkid. And I'm like, I'm 24
• 2:37
  and I just like the look on their face when I do tell them
• 2:39
  my age. And that aspect I do. I do like it, but in general, it
• 2:42
  doesn't really bother me. It honestly, just drives me more.
• 2:44
  So
• 2:45
  it's not a bad thing, because a lot of 24 year olds, you know,
• 2:49
  I've known people older that, you know, don't have it
• 2:52
  together, let alone own a bit own a business. And this is, I
• 2:56
  mean, because of your age, I would imagine it's a fairly new
• 2:58
  business, but you're, you've got the chutzpah, the chutzpah,
• 3:02
  Yes, yep, it took some time to definitely some learning curves.
• 3:05
  But, I mean, I think just especially with my age comes the
• 3:08
  more so knowledge along the technology lines. The social
• 3:10
  media is the driving force of most businesses. Now, if you get
• 3:12
  a good social media platform going, you establish a good
• 3:15
  base, you could really take off just by utilizing AI and what
• 3:19
  you put on social media, yeah, the
• 3:22
  only thing about AI is, like, I saw a post this morning from a
• 3:25
  guy who's about my age. He goes, I just replaced $350 of my
• 3:29
  expenses every month for to vendors with AI. I'm like, man,
• 3:34
  what are we doing here? You know, because he's in a business
• 3:37
  too. That can be, I guess, AI, ified, okay, I just invented
• 3:42
  that term. It really could, like, we don't need, you know,
• 3:47
  we don't need anybody really selling this stuff anymore. He
• 3:51
  sells insurance. And it's like, you know, legal industry,
• 3:55
  insurance, all these, all these industries can be replaced by AI
• 4:00
  at some point, junk remedy, not so much. No, you still need to
• 4:03
  physically haul and still, unless they start, you know,
• 4:05
  deploying robots out there, you know, that's right, yeah. So
• 4:09
  tell me your story you came out of. You're not from around here.
• 4:12
  I could tell by the accent.
• 4:13
  That's right. I'm, I'm actually from northwest suburbs of
• 4:16
  Chicago, so up in Illinois, spent the first 21 years of my
• 4:19
  life there. I went to Illinois State my first two years. But
• 4:23
  now backtrack just a little bit. There's one other branch of junk
• 4:26
  remedy, and my cousin, business partner Nick degiulio, owns that
• 4:29
  one. So I worked for him for about five, six years. Loved
• 4:33
  every single day of it, and then I went off to college. So I was
• 4:36
  working on my Christmas break, my summer break, and then the
• 4:40
  pandemic happened. Fortunately, we were deemed essential
• 4:44
  workers. So, you know, we were sent home from college at the
• 4:46
  time Illinois State. So I was a full time student in full time
• 4:50
  working, which was super nice. So I never really had to
• 4:53
  quarantine. You know, a lot I hear a lot of the quarantine
• 4:55
  stories. I never had to do that. I was physically working. You
• 4:58
  know, actually outside. The trucks every single day during
• 5:01
  COVID. And I was majoring in risk management insurance at the
• 5:04
  time at Illinois State. And, you know, one day I woke up, I'm
• 5:07
  like, I really don't want
• 5:08
  to do this. Hmm, sure, probably 1920 years old, yeah, at the
• 5:12
  time, yeah. I just it wasn't my calling. And I realized how much
• 5:15
  I loved hauling junk and just every day is different. I love
• 5:18
  meeting to people. I love talking. I love I just love the
• 5:21
  daily life of junk removal. So I sat down with Nick, my family
• 5:25
  member, and decided, Hey, what are our thoughts about opening
• 5:29
  up another branch? And you know, the light clicked on between he
• 5:33
  himself and I, and we loved it. His first question, well, where
• 5:36
  are you going to go? I've been to Tennessee before. I've been
• 5:40
  to Green Bay, Indianapolis, and then I haven't been to Phoenix,
• 5:43
  but that was another big one. But based on statistics, areas
• 5:45
  that are rising, you know, for someone like a business like my
• 5:49
  my own, you want to go somewhere where people are moving to not
• 5:52
  moving from. So people are moving with more and more items,
• 5:56
  you know, to get back onto the story was, I ended up
• 5:59
  transferring out of Illinois State, all my friends and, you
• 6:02
  know, I was close to my family, being from Illinois and
• 6:04
  transferred to Western Kentucky, right across the border here in
• 6:07
  Tennessee, and changed my major to small business management and
• 6:11
  entrepreneurship. Started coming down here every weekend trying
• 6:13
  to learn where learn the area and build connections. And sure
• 6:16
  enough, I skipped my graduation because I had an older lady call
• 6:21
  and wanted some items hauled out two days before I was supposed
• 6:24
  to open. And sure enough, now I'm here.
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  You skip the unity, the rite of passage that is graduation. You
• 6:29
  didn't even I'm not gonna bother.
• 6:33
  Well, graduation, graduate. Graduation was one thing you
• 6:37
  know, it was I was supposed to open the day after Memorial Day.
• 6:40
  So memorial day, Monday, Tuesday, was supposed to be my
• 6:42
  opening. To be my opening day. I had, I was still up in Bowling
• 6:45
  Green, Kentucky at the time, and I had a lady call me on
• 6:48
  Thursday. My Trucks were already down here. I was ready to go,
• 6:50
  but I still had graduation. And that weekend of moving out of
• 6:53
  Kentucky, down here to Nashville, and I had this older
• 6:56
  lady call me, and, you know, she was all sorts of hysterical on
• 6:59
  the phone, saying, I need this out. I need this out. Can you be
• 7:01
  here Friday? I looked at my schedule. It happened to be the
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  day I was walking to receive my diploma after four years of
• 7:08
  school. I was just so excited. That's
• 7:11
  about how it meant to you. Yeah, that's it. There's just a piece
• 7:14
  of paper. So do any loans or anything like that? Did you have
• 7:16
  scholarships?
• 7:17
  Hopefully, scholarships. Yes, yep. So I came out of college
• 7:20
  with no student loans, I came out with no debt, nothing like
• 7:24
  that. I was able to jump right into work, and I ended up
• 7:27
  getting my piece of paper, my diploma, mailed to me. My mom
• 7:30
  bought me a frame for it. I have it framed in my house, but I
• 7:33
  started a little bit earlier business wise than I thought.
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  But fun story now so
• 7:38
  probably means more more to your mom that it does, do you I
• 7:41
  guess, big time. Yeah,
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  she was asking me if I'm just gonna, you know, cram it under
• 7:44
  the bed or hang it on the wall, and I ended up hanging it up
• 7:47
  with all of my other junk remedy information in my office now, so
• 7:50
  she's super happy to see that, you know.
• 7:53
  So is it a franchise, or is it your own brand?
• 7:56
  So we did not franchise. So Nick owns the Illinois one, and I am
• 8:00
  the controlling power, and I own this one. However, I was still
• 8:03
  still able to use the brand. We set up an S corp, an S
• 8:06
  corporation, yeah, so I can still use all the trademarks.
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  And he helps me out down here. And you know, he really got me
• 8:12
  going with the gear, like the branding, the Logos, the
• 8:15
  website, everything
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  like that, because he had the all set up and established up
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  there. Yes, he is. He's been
• 8:20
  there for 1516, years. He's been hauling junk for longer than
• 8:23
  that. So he's been well established. I mean, he is 43
• 8:26
  wife and kids, so there was a bit of an age gap between us.
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  However. I mean, he and I work like bread and butter. I mean,
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  we have a very, very good and professional and fun business
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  relationship, but also on the family aspect, which is a big
• 8:39
  thing for us, calling us a small, family owned business,
• 8:42
  being
• 8:42
  a very, you know, strong Irish, German last name that you have.
• 8:47
  Nobody laughs at that joke. For crying out loud, I know it's
• 8:49
  Italian. You're really confused. I did that one time to Charlie
• 8:54
  Benante, the drummer for anthrax, and I said, you know,
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  what's it like being so strongly Irish? And he looked at me like
• 8:59
  I had horns growing on him, and he's like, and he's and he's
• 9:02
  like, Irish. I said, Yeah, I know. Maybe I just need to stop
• 9:06
  telling this joke. Or maybe I need to
• 9:08
  reconstruct it, construct it. Yeah, I like that. I see where
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  it's going reconstruct, reconstruct. Yes, the strong
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  attachment,
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  it's like, basically my B and I ask, I try to be funny. I've
• 9:18
  given up being funny because it's like a crash and burn every
• 9:20
  time. You know, I try to make people laugh. Sometimes it
• 9:24
  happens. And, you know, I thought it'd be funny, and I I
• 9:27
  deliver it with the timing and everything. And it's like,
• 9:29
  people just look at you. I'm like, maybe I'm just not built
• 9:32
  to be funny. And, you know, and stand up, I could be funny on a
• 9:35
  podcast. There we go. It's my gifting, yes. So, so I asked
• 9:40
  about the logo because it looks like a long established, like
• 9:45
  franchise of a logo, right, you know. So I think that it's a
• 9:49
  great name. And, you know, it's, to me, it seemed like you just
• 9:52
  kind of bought into a franchise. But kudos to you, you can
• 9:55
  possibly own it,
• 9:56
  yep. So that was, you know, although I own this one, and he
• 9:59
  owns that one. Yeah, and but I was able to grow up working for
• 10:03
  him at the Illinois branch, and that's where I learned and
• 10:06
  gained all the knowledge I have about what I do. Now, sure,
• 10:08
  there's always learning curves when I came down here, you know,
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  I failed many, many times, but just getting back up and keep
• 10:14
  going. And sure enough, how did you fail? What were some of your
• 10:16
  failures? Some of the failures were not knowing where I'm
• 10:19
  supposed to go. So, like, in terms of, like, a customer's
• 10:23
  house, no, not, not that we have the mask for that one, but, you
• 10:27
  know, there's jobs. I didn't, I didn't know where the transfer
• 10:29
  stations were. I didn't know where the land, the landfills,
• 10:32
  if we do go, the donation centers, things like that. So we
• 10:34
  were doing jobs, and I started biting off more than I can chew,
• 10:37
  because I'm, you know, I was sitting here. I was like, I
• 10:39
  don't know where to take these trucks. I jumped into it, and I
• 10:42
  was like, I can't believe I thought of one of the most
• 10:44
  crucial things part of this business is, how do I empty
• 10:47
  these trucks? Oh, yeah. So right off the RIP I'm doing, I we
• 10:50
  ended up cleaning a whole dentist office house, and I
• 10:52
  only, you know, I have two trucks and a couple of trailers
• 10:55
  here, and I'm sitting here, I'm like, I don't know where to take
• 10:57
  these trucks. So I'm calling around, calling around. No, we
• 11:00
  don't take commercial vehicles, or we don't take new vendors.
• 11:04
  And that was a big issue. Of it was a lot of it's just so busy
• 11:07
  here. Now there's so many people that do it that we are not
• 11:10
  accepting new clients. And I can't, I mean, we donate, but a
• 11:13
  lot of it's also non donatable. So, I mean, at that point, it
• 11:17
  goes to a transfer station and they take care
• 11:19
  of it from there. But there's like a dump site out of
• 11:21
  Fairview, though, isn't there?
• 11:23
  But that's see there, there is. But that's the big thing. Is, if
• 11:26
  I'm up in Gallatin or Hendersonville, Tennessee, I
• 11:29
  can't drive down to Fairview. So, I mean, if I am in this
• 11:31
  area, yes, we've gone there, and it works really well. Nowadays.
• 11:33
  I know exactly where to go. I have some good areas in town,
• 11:36
  but at first I'm sitting there and I'm having to postpone jobs
• 11:39
  and stuff like that, because I can't figure out where to take
• 11:42
  these trucks. It was one thing that I just did not think of in
• 11:46
  the whole heat of setting the business up when I was still in
• 11:48
  college and then getting down here to open. The one thing I
• 11:51
  have to do, and we do it multiple times a day, is clear
• 11:53
  our trucks. Yeah. So right off the RIP was, Oh, boy. What do I
• 11:57
  have to do? So I ended up going over to waste management, which
• 12:00
  charges you four times more than other places will, because their
• 12:04
  trucks are coming with 10s of 20 tons of trash per truck, where
• 12:08
  I'm only bringing one ton, right? So they have minimums
• 12:10
  where it's a lot more expensive, so stuff like that, little
• 12:12
  things like that. That led to, I got to be doing this better,
• 12:16
  learning curves
• 12:16
  more. So it's not just a landfill. You can ring it to or
• 12:19
  you got to find them. No, you can't.
• 12:21
  You can't. You gotta find them. Yeah, you can, but they're
• 12:23
  strict about what they can and cannot take. So tires, TVs,
• 12:25
  mattresses, are surcharges at the majority of places. That's
• 12:28
  why we charge surcharges for them. Some places are a little
• 12:32
  bit more lenient on them, but a lot of places have one to two
• 12:34
  ton truck minimum. So if I only fill half a truck of 1000
• 12:38
  pounds, you know, I'm, you know, a little under half a ton
• 12:41
  monetarily. Is it smart to go clear there? No, it's try to go
• 12:45
  somewhere with a lower minimum. I
• 12:46
  mean, it's kind of nice. It's like doing demolition for
• 12:49
  construction. Yes, you know you're going in there, you're
• 12:52
  getting a lot of it's very therapeutic, smashing walls out
• 12:56
  and all that stuff. You're not really having to. I'm not going
• 12:59
  to organize your room. For you, I'm getting all this crap out of
• 13:02
  here. Is it a satisfying thing for you?
• 13:05
  Hands down, probably one of the main reasons I do it, really it,
• 13:09
  is, if you go to our social medias or anything like that,
• 13:12
  you'll see some of the craziest before and afters. And I think
• 13:15
  once we do it, I mean, if it's in a garage, a whole house, a
• 13:18
  hoarding, cleanup, whatever it might be, you know, you just a
• 13:21
  living room. It's not messy, just a living room once you see
• 13:23
  everything cleared out of there, and we clear it out so fast, and
• 13:26
  then we clean up. When we're done, it's just the look on our
• 13:29
  clients face of tears of joy and smiles, of just happy, pure
• 13:34
  happiness, of, I can't believe this is gone. Do
• 13:36
  you help them? Like, what's the lady that? Does it spark joy?
• 13:41
  You know, do you kind of get into that, or is that already
• 13:44
  predetermined by the time you show up? Like, you know, I just,
• 13:48
  should I throw this away? Or, you know, do you have to give
• 13:51
  opinions, or anything like that? So
• 13:53
  I've had people that have asked for my opinion, and I work with
• 13:56
  a lot of staging and clutter companies, okay? And those are
• 14:00
  people that have come in and will organize your garage. And I
• 14:02
  work with some wonderful, wonderful companies down here,
• 14:05
  and they had a rule that they gave to me. They said, If anyone
• 14:08
  ever asks you, tell them if you haven't touched it in five
• 14:11
  years, you're probably not going to touch it again. Yeah, get rid
• 14:16
  of it.
• 14:16
  See, I have a garage full of all that stuff, you know, spare
• 14:20
  parts and screws and brackets that every time you get
• 14:24
  something, it could be, you know, a set of shades or blinds,
• 14:29
  and they come with all the extra parts. And my mindset is, why
• 14:32
  would I throw this? Is valuable stuff, you know, somebody made
• 14:35
  this, or a machine made this, and it came from, you know, at
• 14:39
  some point the earth, you know, I'm going to toss it in the
• 14:41
  trash. It's still in the packaging. No, I'm going to save
• 14:43
  it. Because you never know when I need a, you know, a bracket
• 14:46
  that looks like it's been bent out of shape. Yeah, maybe once
• 14:50
  in a blue moon. I'm like, Man, I'm glad I kept that.
• 14:53
  Yep, that's right. As a garage Guru, I understand exactly what
• 14:56
  you're saying from my personal standpoint. Then at the other
• 14:59
  end, it's, you know, what? You can go men, you can go bend and
• 15:02
  buy a bracket there for $5 but not have the countless boxes and
• 15:05
  then try to find it. So, I mean, everyone's different on that, on
• 15:08
  that, but when people do ask for my opinion, pretty much, I'll
• 15:13
  say, I mean, unless it has real sedimental family value or it's
• 15:16
  an heirloom, of course, you know, you're not, you're not
• 15:18
  going to really touch that heirloom. It's just going to sit
• 15:20
  and look pretty on the mantle or whatever. But if they're just
• 15:23
  boxes of old kid toys, yeah, you know, we'll take them because
• 15:26
  we'll go donate that to Toys for Tots and kids that need stuff
• 15:28
  like that. So if you haven't touched it in five years, five
• 15:31
  years is the number, huh? I'd like to say, so yeah, I think
• 15:35
  that's, I think that's the sweet spot. I'd
• 15:38
  say probably go down as much as six months. You could. You
• 15:41
  could. So you said getting down here, there's a lot I was going
• 15:45
  to ask about the competition, because we've recently got into
• 15:48
  the garage door business as a company here, and we have a
• 15:52
  consultant on hand who's, like the garage door guy in this
• 15:55
  area. He's he actually came from Chicago. He's a good friend of
• 15:59
  mine for the past 10 years. His name is Bill, yes, and he's
• 16:02
  consulting with us. He is like 50 years in the business. He
• 16:08
  knows his stuff, and just by happenstance, we went through a
• 16:12
  season in our company, we had to pivot and figure out how to get
• 16:15
  more near term commodity based revenue, because a lot of what
• 16:21
  we do podcasting, it's a want, not a need, you know, colorful
• 16:24
  lighting, you could put in car washes and other places that go
• 16:27
  in harsh environments. And then some want, not a need, right?
• 16:31
  It's, you know, whoever. Maybe it'll become a need at some
• 16:34
  point, but it's still kind of a want. So what is it that we can
• 16:37
  get into when garage doors happen to come up and we, we
• 16:42
  started getting into that because of the commodity aspect
• 16:46
  of it. It's something we can handle. A lot of technical,
• 16:49
  mechanical work that we are capable of. I carry a set of
• 16:52
  tools in the back of my jeep, in case I got to go fix a garage
• 16:55
  door. And it's we just kind of, we went into it that way, when
• 17:00
  all of a sudden, after seeing what Bill went through and how
• 17:04
  he built his business, it was like a handful of garage door
• 17:07
  people out there. Now they're everywhere. Oh yeah, oh my. It's
• 17:11
  like, we're really where were all these people? We decided to
• 17:15
  get in the pool and like, everybody's in the pool. That's
• 17:18
  right. Is that what you found to be in the well, you moved here
• 17:21
  so you had no but exists, of comparison,
• 17:23
  exact same thing. I mean, in the long run, I do being up in
• 17:27
  Illinois, there's the same amount of competition, if not
• 17:29
  more, there than here. That was definitely an eye opener for me.
• 17:35
  Yeah, for sure. I mean, kind of talking back to Illinois Nick,
• 17:39
  the only other company before Nick opened. You know, 1516,
• 17:42
  years ago was one 800 got junk, the world's largest junk, and
• 17:45
  they're in three, four different countries, in 48 of the
• 17:47
  continental United States down here. I got here, and pretty
• 17:51
  much everyone was well established. So it was harder
• 17:53
  for me to kick my foot in that door. I was the last one in the
• 17:56
  pool. Yeah, you know. So what
• 17:58
  was the plan? You said, to figure it out. Did you have a
• 18:00
  strategy?
• 18:01
  See, that's tough. That was the tough part. I think the main
• 18:04
  driver is why, why do I do it? And how can I show people my why
• 18:12
  and my, my company's why, as to, again, why they should use us
• 18:17
  over you know, the 1516, other companies around here, even in
• 18:22
  and so you get, you have your established business, businesses
• 18:25
  like mine, that are licensed, bonded and insured. We have the
• 18:29
  gear. We have the uniform, friendly staff that are
• 18:31
  background check, this, that and the other. However, if that's
• 18:34
  you want to bring in in the house, I hope you do. But we
• 18:37
  can't compete with the normal two guys that are just having
• 18:42
  they have a trailer sitting in their backyard, and they're just
• 18:44
  hauling junk on the weekends for not even an eighth of the price
• 18:47
  of what me or any of the other company, we just can't compete
• 18:50
  with that. No, and that's the thing. So if you want to bring
• 18:53
  someone that is not insured into your house, if you scratch a
• 18:55
  wall, well, great, you're never going to see them again.
• 18:57
  Accidents happen if we were to scratch a wall, you know, we're
• 18:59
  insured to come take care of that floor, stuff like that. So
• 19:03
  really stressing on that in our why, as to why we're the best
• 19:07
  out there, why we're the best in this area, was really getting
• 19:10
  the name and our mission statement out there. Are you
• 19:12
  putting yourself as my main face? Yes, and speaking and all
• 19:17
  that stuff I forget to know you.
• 19:19
  I found through trial and error again, just from starting that
• 19:23
  if I post just a social media picture of my truck, of the junk
• 19:26
  trucks wrapped clean and they look good, great. I get, you
• 19:30
  know, my average amount of likes, comment shares, but when
• 19:33
  I post pictures of my face in front of a truck or my crew all
• 19:37
  happy and smiling, I get double Hmm. I think people like to see
• 19:42
  who is going to be coming into their house, and I'll post on
• 19:46
  Facebook in these different like groups around town, I will
• 19:50
  significantly, every single time, get more likes, comments,
• 19:54
  shares and referrals off of people seeing my face. Mm. It's
• 20:00
  the same thing as, why do I want to go to all of my estimates in
• 20:02
  person? Because I want that physical handshake. I can give
• 20:05
  them an estimate. I mean, most of the days I can give you an
• 20:07
  estimate over the phone, and you'll never see me. Yeah, even
• 20:10
  though, if it's a cheap job or expensive, I want to go there to
• 20:13
  physically shake your hand, look you dead in the eye, and build
• 20:16
  that personal relation with you. And most of the time, you'll get
• 20:19
  the job. Compared to, if I were to just do it over the phone?
• 20:22
  Was that, based on your experience up in Chicago and
• 20:25
  being a kind of a mentee to your I
• 20:27
  would definitely say, so yeah, that was definitely the
• 20:29
  strongest thing. But again, I was 1617, or 15, 1617, years old
• 20:33
  at that time. I wasn't really thinking about that, of course
• 20:35
  not. But was, is that how he operated? Yeah, yeah, Nick. Nick
• 20:38
  still goes to all the in person estimates, or all the estimates
• 20:41
  and stuff like that still to show face, because people want
• 20:44
  to have that relation nowadays. Everyone's so sheltered and
• 20:46
  you're on your phone, everything you could do is on your phone
• 20:49
  now, but still having that personal relation and physically
• 20:52
  shaking hands and looking eye to eye in a room makes a big
• 20:55
  difference. Will get you the biggest difference
• 20:57
  so and as people in your generation, around your age,
• 21:00
  it's amazing. These are old school techniques that have been
• 21:05
  kind of forgotten even, you know, I tell my kids, and I kind
• 21:09
  of harp on them with when you text somebody, stop using text
• 21:15
  speech, you know, all the different abbreviations and
• 21:19
  contractions and things of that nature, because you look and
• 21:22
  sound like everybody else, right? If you want to rise above
• 21:26
  and of course, this is me as their dad who doesn't know
• 21:29
  anything. Telling them this, it makes a difference. Yes, it
• 21:34
  does, you know. I mean my son literally. The other day, text
• 21:38
  asked me a question, and I was like, Dude, I have no idea what
• 21:40
  you're even talking about. I don't know if you're just, you
• 21:43
  know, you kind of sped through this message or whatever. And
• 21:47
  it's like you're not an idiot. Why would I sound like one?
• 21:51
  Right? You know what I mean, and it's, he's not an idiot at all.
• 21:54
  He's borderline genius, yeah? But it's like you don't just
• 21:57
  take some pride in how you type and how you put yourself out
• 22:01
  there, old school methodologies of like, what you're talking
• 22:04
  about, dude, that'll that alone will put you ahead of the curve,
• 22:07
  right? Because nobody's doing it anymore, you know, kind of sad
• 22:12
  damn phones, yeah. The biggest
• 22:15
  generation difference, I think, is that, I mean, even so you
• 22:18
  talk to the majority of you know people my age, and then the
• 22:24
  occasional few. And just that, it's a colossal difference of
• 22:29
  old school, new school, or the slang. It's, I mean, even so
• 22:31
  what you're saying, I understand I'm in that generation, but some
• 22:34
  of the times I'll hear some of the slang, I'm like, I actually
• 22:36
  have no clue what that term means. I mean, sure, I know the
• 22:38
  most of it's just having friends and whatnot, but some of it, I'm
• 22:41
  like, I really don't know what that means.
• 22:43
  Well, it's not only that you you just go on Facebook any given
• 22:46
  day, and some of these community pages, Yes, ours being I heart
• 22:50
  Spring Hill, there are people that just want to get on there
• 22:53
  and bitch. And when they do, it's not a good argument. It
• 22:57
  didn't. They're, I understand the point they're making, but
• 23:00
  it's one of those things. They're kind of going on. The
• 23:02
  sentences are have no punctuation. They the English is
• 23:06
  just butchered. And it's not like they don't they're not
• 23:09
  foreign or anything like that. They're not from outside the
• 23:12
  country. These are people that you presume to have been born
• 23:15
  here, right? Okay? And you read these, proofread, for crying out
• 23:20
  loud, it's just like, if you want to be taken seriously,
• 23:25
  write,
• 23:26
  well, yes, oh, well, landslide, yeah, yeah,
• 23:29
  but it's yeah, here we are. I feel like I'm gonna get off my
• 23:32
  lawn guy now, yeah,
• 23:34
  I've had people write me emails, like, more emotional
• 23:36
  professionals, 4050, year olds. I'm like, they're still spelling
• 23:39
  yours in your email. Yeah, this email is only five sentences
• 23:42
  long. Yeah, takes 30 seconds.
• 23:44
  Now, I will say there's a case for brevity. Like, even when I
• 23:47
  pitch people, when we talk to people in car washes, I try not
• 23:51
  to do like, you know, essay length emails and stuff, right?
• 23:55
  Hey, here's what you asked for. Here's I always try to get on
• 23:57
  the phone with them, yeah, you know, so they get a feel for who
• 24:00
  I am, not necessarily. You know, if we can do FaceTime, if they
• 24:04
  want to, we can. But, you know, typically I talk about, hey,
• 24:06
  here's what you talked about. Here's what this thing, here's
• 24:08
  bullet points. Make it look nice and neat but easily digestible
• 24:13
  within 2030, seconds, right? Right? Is that something that
• 24:17
  you do as well? I mean, you're seeing everybody.
• 24:19
  Yeah, I'm seeing everyone. I think eventually you're not
• 24:21
  going to be able to. I pretty much true, true. But I'm excited
• 24:25
  for that day. I want to get so busy that I am now running out
• 24:28
  of that time. That's a good thing for business. You know,
• 24:30
  busy is good, but, yeah, I mean, my I still do handwritten
• 24:34
  estimates. They have invoice to go. I haven't switched over. I
• 24:38
  still do handwritten estimates when I'm in person and give them
• 24:41
  a physical piece of paper, whether they stick it or throw
• 24:43
  in the junk drawer or put it on the fridge, so be it. But yes,
• 24:46
  when I am talking to more people throughout emails and stuff, it
• 24:49
  is pretty much this is what's going on. This is what you
• 24:51
  filled. Here's your estimate. This is how you could pay. Thank
• 24:55
  you very much. Yeah, and then go from there,
• 24:57
  10. Yeah, yeah. How many people you got working
• 24:59
  for you? Right? I have six really. So I have four full time
• 25:03
  guys, two part time. And the part time is basically they're
• 25:06
  off one day a week. So they both mow lawns, one of them with his
• 25:10
  father. It's just one of their smaller, you know, family,
• 25:12
  little family business. They wrote, mow the neighborhood and
• 25:15
  stuff like that. So one day a week, he's off, and he lets me
• 25:18
  know with ahead of time. And then the other guys through
• 25:21
  going through some schooling for fire to be a fireman. So
• 25:25
  the thing about what you guys do is, how do you take a commodity
• 25:28
  business like this and make it socially really interesting? I
• 25:35
  kind of think about the guy. I bring him up a lot, and I want
• 25:39
  to have him on at some point. I should probably be charging them
• 25:41
  advertising. By this point, Tennessee electrician, here's a
• 25:45
  commodity based a trade where not a lot of people, hopefully,
• 25:49
  the youth, is starting to see the appeal and the fruitfulness
• 25:53
  of a career that a trade can offer you. I was too short
• 25:56
  sighted back in the day. I wanted to get in the radio, but
• 25:59
  I did. I was an electricians apprentice. I did low voltage
• 26:02
  wiring for a season with my dad. So I have a pretty varied
• 26:05
  background when it comes to that. This guy has found a way
• 26:10
  to get, like, tool deals. He's probably got sponsorships. You
• 26:13
  know, he's making money off of Instagram. He's got a couple
• 26:16
  100,000 followers, right? Yeah, he's just here in Tennessee. He
• 26:19
  just sticks a camera behind him. If he's at decking out a panel,
• 26:22
  like ripping out the old circuit breakers and putting a new
• 26:25
  wiring and making it look nice, he'll do a time lapse video.
• 26:28
  Yep. And dude, it is so satisfying to watch. Yes, it is.
• 26:32
  So I mean, if you do things like that, where you're you know,
• 26:34
  hey, here's the room
• 26:37
  you see all the you know, all the time. Do you that is
• 26:40
  something I'm really trying to one of the main things. And keep
• 26:42
  in mind, I'm I could film. I don't have, you know, cameras.
• 26:44
  Some of my employees have good cameras, and they've came and
• 26:47
  take pictures of the trucks. All you need is a GoPro. That's what
• 26:49
  I'm talking about. And I want to get, I want to get the chess
• 26:52
  piece GoPro, because they say always get content. Yeah, your
• 26:55
  before and afters can make the biggest difference. But when we
• 26:57
  cut down a shed or a hot tub, I'll take a time lapse, I'll set
• 27:00
  my phone up, take a time lapse, yeah, and I'll post that, then a
• 27:04
  before picture and an after picture, and I'll put that on
• 27:06
  Instagram, Facebook, tick tock, and they blow up. Yeah, people
• 27:09
  love them.
• 27:10
  The guy, it's so satisfying to watch. They are. You see the
• 27:12
  guys who mow lawns? Yep, you see that? Oh, those, those ones are,
• 27:15
  they're amazing. Yep, there's so much fun to watch. There's one
• 27:18
  guy, he just goes and he'll find, like, an abandoned house
• 27:21
  or, you know, someplace where their lawn just is way
• 27:24
  overgrown. It knocks on the door. I do it for free. Yeah,
• 27:27
  I'll just, I'll mow your lawn for free. It's content for me.
• 27:30
  I'm more than happy. And typically, people are like,
• 27:32
  Okay, what's the catch? There is no catch, I promise you. You
• 27:35
  know, here's my social media channel. He's got the clout, you
• 27:37
  know, he's got the social proof. This is what I do to promote my
• 27:40
  business. And he's got a tremendous following. I mean,
• 27:43
  it's amazing. And it's like, for me, what can we possibly be
• 27:47
  doing, you know, to make it look interesting, I did, like, actual
• 27:50
  takes, voiceover stuff for a while. I've done mess ups and
• 27:55
  flubs, you know, I probably should get back to do those
• 27:58
  again. But the voiceover stuff that doesn't seem to be as
• 28:02
  interesting as it used to be, I guess. But I don't know. Man, I
• 28:06
  don't know how you make, you know, making a podcast all that
• 28:08
  interesting. Oh, yeah, other than the actual content that
• 28:13
  comes out, you're right, you know, right. But no, get getting
• 28:15
  those before and afters. I just started integrating into Tiktok.
• 28:19
  Really was not much of a Tiktok fan at all. Actually, I don't
• 28:23
  really. I use social media, not as much. Personally, time to
• 28:27
  time, it's nice to see my extended family that they get to
• 28:30
  see my stuff, you know, this, that and the other. But for
• 28:31
  business, it's pretty much my go to now. Now I started going into
• 28:35
  the tiktoks, yeah, and making those, which I'm posting these
• 28:38
  longer, you know, either 32nd video, for 10 second, and
• 28:41
  they're just collages, yeah, if we have a full clean out, okay,
• 28:44
  you're picking up a box, I'll get a video of that. You two are
• 28:46
  picking up the couch. Get a video to that. Load it into the
• 28:49
  trucks. Get a video of the trucks before, after, breaking
• 28:53
  apart doors. You know, whatever we have to do and put it all
• 28:56
  within the same video. And it's very, very sad,
• 29:00
  what you need to do is, once you get big enough, buy a piece of
• 29:03
  property and put like a maybe, like a 50, 6070, foot tower on
• 29:10
  it, right where you can hoist things up and Will
• 29:14
  it break? Yes, yep, I've seen
• 29:17
  those. They're Australian guys that do that. They have a giant
• 29:19
  tower out in the freaking the bush, the Outback, and they
• 29:23
  bring random stuff. They have, like a giant AX at the bottom of
• 29:27
  this thing. That's like an ax head that's just huge, yep, the
• 29:29
  size of that table, yes. And they just drop stuff on it, just
• 29:33
  to see if it'll break. But, I mean, Will it break? Is a
• 29:35
  concept. You're welcome,
• 29:37
  and it's awesome. I think the biggest thing I've looked at is
• 29:41
  doing the rage rooms. Now, let me pick your brain on this one
• 29:46
  interesting they said, I mean, if you think about it, I'm
• 29:49
  hauling things that, if they can't be donated, you know,
• 29:52
  break them, take a baseball bat, sledge hammer. Yeah, I
• 29:55
  my job is living with a rage room, right? And it's fun. I'm
• 29:59
  never mad. I'm it's a great time. But imagine opening that,
• 30:03
  yeah, as a side venture. But taking vid, you see videos of
• 30:06
  these people in the rage rooms, and you get the one guy that
• 30:08
  goes in there and he hits the same thing 50 times. There's
• 30:11
  other things in there. He's so mad. He's going in there, comes
• 30:14
  out. I feel good. And those videos get a lot of views.
• 30:20
  Imagine getting just a bedroom sized room, and now I'm not, you
• 30:23
  know, I'm not paying to fill it up. I get things off the job,
• 30:26
  baseball bats, golf clubs, you name it. But those videos are
• 30:29
  satisfying. There
• 30:30
  was a guy we were helping as a radio station. We did a
• 30:35
  community benefit day where we'd go out and help a charity, you
• 30:39
  know, do these kinds of things. And one day, we went out to a
• 30:42
  place. It was for a battered for battered women's shelter, and we
• 30:46
  were there to help them organize and clean up and get some junk
• 30:48
  out and stuff. So across the street was a big football field,
• 30:52
  and our my general manager and the sales manager found a set of
• 30:57
  golf clubs. They wanted to just dump old golf club. So, like, we
• 31:01
  need to take these across the street and we're going to do
• 31:04
  what we've always wanted to do on the golf course, hurl these
• 31:09
  things as far as we can, because we can't do that on the golf
• 31:12
  course. And that's what they did. They went across like, oh,
• 31:16
  that's just, I've you have no money. No idea how many times
• 31:19
  I've wanted to do that.
• 31:24
  You're onto something there little,
• 31:25
  I mean, little things just like that. Yeah, think about it. How
• 31:28
  much fun and joy does it bring you? For instance, the golf club
• 31:31
  you're talking about, how much just joy and just pure happiness
• 31:34
  does it bring just taking a golf club and throwing it as far as
• 31:37
  you can, right? It sounds like it's something little, but in
• 31:39
  the end of the day. It's, it's
• 31:41
  attached to, yes, a life experience that can either feed
• 31:44
  you so much joy or frustrate the crap out
• 31:47
  here, exactly for something that easy to think of, but brings you
• 31:51
  so much joy and happiness and laughter. It's like things like
• 31:54
  that. It's worth it. It's
• 31:55
  like, How many times did you want to, you know, hurl a mouse
• 31:57
  across the room, not an actual animal, but a mouse, you know?
• 32:00
  Oh, yeah, because your computer doesn't work. I know I have.
• 32:04
  There have been times I wanted to take this damn computer and
• 32:06
  throw it out the window, oh yeah, and stomp on it, like that
• 32:09
  scene in office space. But maybe that's it. You know, I'm
• 32:12
  thinking commercial property, where you operate out of and
• 32:15
  then side business, like you're talking about, Will it break and
• 32:19
  the rage room? Yeah, build it. What's that tower for? Oh, just
• 32:22
  stick around. Stick around. I'm fine. We got, we've got a, you
• 32:25
  know, a sectional sofa that's going to be hoisted up over to
• 32:27
  drop it. And Will it break? That's great. It's like, great.
• 32:31
  It's like the old school, Will It Blend? Where they put stuff
• 32:34
  in this, like, industrial blender? Yes, they do, like,
• 32:37
  cell phones and all this other stuff. And, yeah,
• 32:39
  now they have the new one out there. It's, uh, cake or fake,
• 32:42
  yeah, yep.
• 32:45
  Kahoot. The grinding video, the shredding videos, get one of
• 32:48
  those big industrial shredders,
• 32:50
  yes? And I've seen the hydraulic press, yes. The hydraulic press
• 32:54
  satisfying too. You're getting
• 32:55
  free content. And you get all this, you know, these pieces of
• 32:58
  things that, if they don't take them and make content out of
• 33:01
  them, because
• 33:01
  then they come look at me. Now they're mine. They could turn to
• 33:03
  dust Exactly. Now,
• 33:05
  if you take, like, a mattress, or what were the other things
• 33:09
  that you got to pay a premium
• 33:10
  on mattress, mattresses, tires, TVs, so tires,
• 33:14
  obviously being shredded, yeah, that could be turned into
• 33:17
  mulch. That's what they do, yeah, well, depending on the
• 33:20
  yard. But, yeah, so, I mean,
• 33:21
  if you because, I mean, rubber mulch is expensive. Yes, it is,
• 33:24
  you know, you gotta, you go to get it. Get a regular, you know,
• 33:26
  wood mulch at Home Depot, the bag is, I mean, rubber mulch is
• 33:29
  probably 10 times as much. I want to say, Yeah, dude, buy
• 33:34
  yourself a shredder.
• 33:35
  They're looking, you're looking at the gold mine businesses
• 33:37
  there. And then it's, you know, how can you come off? You know,
• 33:40
  go in on that with you can spend so many different businesses off
• 33:43
  of this, just finding things, right? I mean, we just named six
• 33:46
  in the past two minutes.
• 33:47
  Is this the most fruitful podcast you've ever been on,
• 33:50
  aside from, aside from Lindsay Stafford, she was, she was a
• 33:52
  great yes
• 33:53
  to be on. Now, it's been a great time, great time. But pitching
• 33:56
  the ideas, it's just fun to start talking about, because are
• 33:58
  we talking about
• 33:59
  new things here? I
• 34:00
  think so really. I mean, you haven't thought of these before,
• 34:04
  the rage room was probably the bigger one. Yeah, that's a good
• 34:06
  idea. I think that's, I think that was one just because,
• 34:09
  again, we were talking about the videos not satisfying. They are
• 34:11
  for people to watch. Will break, Yeah, same thing in these rage
• 34:13
  rooms. Yeah. You know, I've thought about that for the
• 34:16
  longest time, and you could do it. It's so feasible.
• 34:19
  So getting back to, like, if you shred a mattress, obviously, the
• 34:23
  tires you don't need. You wouldn't want to bring that
• 34:25
  stuff back to a landfill. Now you can actually, hey, who needs
• 34:28
  rubber mulch? We're putting it into these cardboard boxes or
• 34:31
  whatever. And here's a cubic yard of it, you know, cardboard
• 34:34
  box. And come pick them up. You stack them up, and you charge
• 34:37
  however much.
• 34:39
  I'm just saying, buddy. I mean, that's,
• 34:41
  you have it there now, is the demand for tires there? Well, I
• 34:45
  mean, there's
• 34:45
  everybody, there's, there's always tires being recycled and
• 34:48
  stuff like that. That's it. Is recycling? Does it matter if
• 34:52
  they're, you know, I guess radios will have the the webbing
• 34:56
  inside of them, right? Does that matter in mulcher, though? Or,
• 34:59
  yeah. I don't know who that's
• 35:01
  a good question. Yeah, I don't know. I know that a lot of times
• 35:04
  we do get tires with rims still on them, yeah? And, you know,
• 35:07
  the different yards take care of that. But I, I'm curious about
• 35:10
  the netting inside, if they if that matters for the mulch, I
• 35:12
  wouldn't really think so. They showed it up pretty small,
• 35:14
  yeah? Because, you see, it's like those big, you know,
• 35:17
  they're almost like horror movie type of like, if someone were to
• 35:20
  get caught in one of those things, good, you know, cyanoy?
• 35:23
  Yes,
• 35:24
  that's like when you're watching a snake movie, right? Or, I'm
• 35:27
  sorry, a spider movie, and that's the web, you know, to go
• 35:29
  the other way, right? So I don't know. It's a good question.
• 35:33
  Yeah,
• 35:35
  if you find out how much a grinder is, let me know.
• 35:37
  Because, I mean, if you want a partner in that business,
• 35:39
  that's, that's, a no brainer.
• 35:42
  So another business on that, if we're buying a big grinder, will
• 35:46
  it grind right? Will this TV grind up? Who knows,
• 35:50
  they typically will, unless
• 35:53
  it's like a piece of cobalt or something like that. But you
• 35:55
  know,
• 35:56
  nevertheless, the amount of fun you can have with a grinder,
• 35:58
  right? Right? I only imagine
• 36:00
  how what the maintenance is on those things, but for tires,
• 36:03
  they're gonna chew right through, right? Yeah, you can
• 36:05
  do, will it grind? But, I mean, they really, at some of these
• 36:08
  videos, you see them with tricycles and bicycles engine
• 36:11
  blocks,
• 36:12
  yep. No problem with the teeth. And then you got them on the
• 36:14
  roller, and then it just somehow gets caught in
• 36:16
  it. It's relentless churning. It's like, you know, even the
• 36:19
  hydraulic press videos and like, Okay, what's, what's gonna crush
• 36:23
  a hydraulic press? Right? Right? Is there stuff in there that
• 36:27
  it's crushing? I'm like, that should, wow. Okay, would that
• 36:30
  the hydraulic press
• 36:31
  should give in? That's a That's a good question. Will a
• 36:34
  hydraulic press crush fail? Yeah, what's gonna happen? It's
• 36:37
  like, Iron sharpens. I
• 36:39
  think there have been videos where I guess the hoses explode.
• 36:43
  So it has happened
• 36:45
  that would probably make the most sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:49
  I've seen some videos, even trucks, like my trucks are
• 36:51
  hydraulic lifts. They're dump trucks, yeah. But I've seen
• 36:53
  videos, not mine, luckily. But I've seen other trucks that
• 36:56
  those hoses once they blow and they catch fire. I mean, it's
• 36:59
  like a kaboom that
• 37:01
  actually happened out here, really? Yeah, we were in Vegas
• 37:04
  for a trade show few years back, and we get a photo or a video on
• 37:12
  our one of our cameras from one of our guys and like, where is
• 37:17
  this? It's our driveway. A garbage truck came up to pick up
• 37:20
  our stuff, and then all of a sudden, it just blew a hydraulic
• 37:23
  line and caught fire. Yep, and they're flammable. Oh, they're
• 37:27
  hugely fam I mean, we still got melted siding. It actually
• 37:31
  totaled one of our employees cars, just from the heat.
• 37:33
  They get hot. Yeah, that hydraulic fluids like burning
• 37:36
  oil. Yeah, it gets hot because they burn for a very, very long
• 37:39
  time. Yeah. So
• 37:41
  my wife's like, there's smoke coming from where your office
• 37:45
  is. I said, that's because it is our office. She goes, Oh my
• 37:48
  gosh. I said, No, a fire truck or a garbage truck caught on
• 37:51
  fire in our driveway. Wow, crazy. There's a lot of
• 37:55
  different you got my wheels turning. There's a lot of
• 37:58
  different things that you can do with the byproducts of what you
• 38:01
  do, right? You know,
• 38:02
  think about, we just came up with that in five minutes. I
• 38:04
  know, think of the Amen,
• 38:06
  and now somebody's gonna hear this and run with the idea. So
• 38:09
  hopefully, you know, between when we record it until when we
• 38:11
  put it out, there'll be, we'll be on to this thing. We can get
• 38:14
  it going. We can. So you had something else that happened
• 38:18
  yesterday. You went on local TV, original TV. How did that work
• 38:23
  out? How did that begin and how did it go?
• 38:26
  So that was something different, completely different. I've never
• 38:30
  been live on the air, you know? I've done podcast, Lindsay's
• 38:32
  podcast, and this, that and the other. And then I got
• 38:36
  approached. I got approached about, you know how so my
• 38:39
  trucks, for instance, are you've seen them, are bright and
• 38:43
  yellow. They really pop with a junkologist, doctor on the side.
• 38:47
  Well, someone from The News Station saw that, saw my trucks
• 38:50
  on the road, and sure enough, one of their marketing resources
• 38:53
  or directors reached out to me, someone along those lines,
• 38:56
  reached out to me and said, Hey, we just did a deep dive on your
• 38:58
  whole website. We love what you stand for. We love your small
• 39:02
  family owned we would really love to get you on the air. And
• 39:05
  at first it was a phone call. So at first I'm thinking, is this,
• 39:09
  is this real? Are they pitching me right? Or what's going on
• 39:12
  here? Like, is this just going to be you're trying to get me,
• 39:14
  you know, for stuff like that, she's No, we just want to get
• 39:19
  you on the air. We We just saw your trucks. Loved him, and we
• 39:21
  want to, you know, promote your business, and we have some spots
• 39:24
  to fill. Sure enough, couple weeks go by, and sure enough,
• 39:27
  yesterday, I was live on the air at two o'clock on the wkrn News,
• 39:32
  two ABC, nice. So school is never been on the air like that
• 39:35
  before, maybe when I was a kid, when they filmed like a school,
• 39:38
  and it just happened to be our school, but for me, for me
• 39:41
  doing, like, an actual interview. It was very, very
• 39:44
  exciting. So,
• 39:45
  so when you got down here, you didn't have six employees, it
• 39:48
  was just you, it was
• 39:49
  just myself. And then my business partner stayed for like
• 39:52
  a week to help me get going, and that was it. And it just jumped
• 39:55
  off from there.
• 39:56
  And then how many trucks and stuff did you have? Right off
• 39:59
  the bat? That too. So you built up to where you are, which is,
• 40:03
  yep. So I started with two trucks. I still have two trucks.
• 40:07
  Now I have some trailers, but I'm looking for another truck,
• 40:10
  or even two more trucks. That's
• 40:12
  another business we kind of looked into because we got a
• 40:14
  couple of trailers here on site. We rent out our trailers. Yeah,
• 40:18
  it's, that's a big one. It's, it's a tough, it's tough to find
• 40:21
  things of the price of these trucks, just the price of steel.
• 40:26
  So the box on the back is, it's an absurd amount of money just
• 40:29
  for the box. And you're not even talking if you're buying a
• 40:31
  reliable or even new. I mean, it's the price is insane. So you
• 40:35
  know what? Luckily, I can still function with my two now and
• 40:38
  trailers, and they're longer days, but if I can get another
• 40:41
  truck in here, I mean, I'm looking at, you're looking at a
• 40:45
  pretty penny. Nevertheless, if you're buying one that needs
• 40:47
  work or not, yeah, they're like, over 100 grand, right? And then
• 40:50
  you got to sandblast them, paint them, wrap them. That's a big
• 40:53
  thing, even if they're new, is the clean well, then you would
• 40:55
  just wrap them. But wrapping a truck like that's still pretty
• 40:58
  expensive. There's so many little components that go into
• 41:01
  it, adds up pretty quick.
• 41:03
  I mean, that question, I guess it's done well for you, for your
• 41:06
  branding, but ease of getting in contact with you when it's you
• 41:11
  have like an 800 number. That's kind of like one 800 got junk
• 41:15
  or well, so there is, we have our normal 877, our junk number,
• 41:20
  and if you call that, it'll say, push one for Illinois, push two
• 41:23
  for Tennessee, and you'll get directed right to my phone,
• 41:26
  right? But a lot of the even on our websites, my personal
• 41:28
  number, which is just my work number, on my business cards, is
• 41:31
  just my personal number. So you're not going to be talking
• 41:34
  with you know, you're not going to be talking with someone on
• 41:36
  the other side of the world that you know might even be a little
• 41:38
  bit harder to understand them. You're going to talk to me every
• 41:40
  time. You're going to get that family feel for me, you won't
• 41:43
  talk to anyone else but myself. And through and through till the
• 41:45
  end,
• 41:46
  what's the plan? Until you can take all those calls? What are
• 41:49
  you going to do then?
• 41:50
  Then once that happens, it'll be more so a local call center.
• 41:53
  Yeah, I would want a call center that's in the same time zone
• 41:56
  as us. I would hope that you eventually just have some like a
• 41:59
  home base. Well, yes,
• 42:00
  then I mean ideally, having a secretary that could handle the
• 42:03
  schedule, the calls, the estimates, and just throw it
• 42:05
  onto a schedule, then have an ops manager come in and take
• 42:07
  care of that. I mean, that is your ideal down the road. So
• 42:10
  that was a what does that look like in five years?
• 42:13
  In five years? So oddly enough, within my first year, I actually
• 42:16
  just bought another headquarter, a headquarters here. So I think
• 42:20
  in five years, right now I'm looking at 12 full time so no
• 42:23
  college, just full time workers. I'm looking at six trucks total.
• 42:27
  So then I have two guys per truck. So I'm running six truck
• 42:29
  teams, 12 guys total. And then I'm also looking to in five
• 42:34
  years is have an actual about a 6000 square foot pole barn where
• 42:38
  I'm running fully everything out of with hydraulic lifts in them,
• 42:42
  so I could work on my trucks myself to not have to pay
• 42:45
  mechanics, because, again, I like to do that on the side. So
• 42:47
  we're looking at six trucks a pole barn and 12 workers. Is my
• 42:56
  physical like goals for the business.
• 42:58
  So essentially, doubling your business, really, probably
• 43:00
  tripling your business too. About triple, yeah, you're gonna
• 43:03
  buy. You're gonna have to do that in order to accommodate, I
• 43:05
  want
• 43:06
  to set your goals high, yeah. So have something to reach. Well,
• 43:09
  setting your goals high would be 10x in your business. Yeah,
• 43:11
  yeah. So I'm looking forward to it. I think you know i or i know
• 43:14
  that that's really what I'm looking for in the five year
• 43:17
  span. And then really start elaborating more on business
• 43:20
  plans, and even so opening up side business. We're talking
• 43:23
  about the mulch, the rage rooms, the you know, stuff like that.
• 43:26
  Right on.
• 43:27
  So how do people get a hold of you and find Well, actually,
• 43:30
  first off, before we get there, I had this question asked of me
• 43:33
  this week, and I'm still trying to figure out what my answer is.
• 43:37
  We talked a lot about legacy, and I was actually schooled on
• 43:41
  the definition of the of the word legacy wasn't really what I
• 43:45
  thought it meant. Like, I always thought of legacy, like Bill
• 43:48
  Clinton wanted his libraries and stuff like that, and the what he
• 43:52
  did for the country to be his legacy. It turned out to be, you
• 43:55
  know, something entirely different. And we kind of landed
• 43:59
  on the notion of, well, what do you want to be remembered for?
• 44:03
  So question to you, what do you want to be remembered for? You
• 44:08
  to make me feel a whole lot better, if you you struggle with
• 44:10
  this answer.
• 44:12
  He didn't quit. I
• 44:14
  think that's the biggest thing. That's a good one. I mean, well,
• 44:17
  at least off the top my head, I'm sure if I sat down and
• 44:19
  really elaborated on that question, but for a quick answer
• 44:22
  is, I didn't quit. Yeah, I just kept on going and working
• 44:24
  through. Get knocked down, get back up. Get knocked down two
• 44:27
  more times. Get up two more times.
• 44:29
  Which is gonna happen, right? Yeah, that's that's life. That's
• 44:32
  business. What does life in your 40s look like for you? You have,
• 44:38
  like, a big plan for that, because you're 24 you said
• 44:40
  right, right, at the helm of a, probably a six figure business,
• 44:45
  I would imagine quickly approaching seven. That's of not
• 44:49
  a lot of 24 year olds are doing that.
• 44:52
  It's very exciting. I'm thinking for 40. I mean, it's tough for
• 44:56
  me to sit down, yeah. Could will that change when I'm 40? I. I'm
• 45:00
  assuming. So, yeah, but right now it's like, Oh, I get, you
• 45:03
  know, I get one Saturday off, and what am I doing? I'm washing
• 45:06
  my junk trucks. I'm still working and doing stuff because
• 45:09
  it's hard for me to sit still. So I don't know what 40 really
• 45:11
  looks like, as much as I want to say I could sit in a rocking
• 45:14
  chair on my porch and drink coffee and watch the deer walk
• 45:16
  by. Well, you know, I have people that take care of the
• 45:20
  rest of the aspects of junk remedy and
• 45:21
  work, right, or whatever. How many other businesses you own by
• 45:25
  that
• 45:26
  exactly. So who knows? Maybe I'm opening up another business that
• 45:29
  I can just run from the tank theater my own office, right?
• 45:31
  And have people for that. The world is my oyster.
• 45:35
  You got a great attitude. Man, endless possibilities. Man,
• 45:39
  those possibilities and that, just because of that. You should
• 45:41
  really hire Dan and his team to take whatever junk you have and
• 45:46
  clean it out and do all the things, because it's you don't
• 45:50
  find you don't, first of all, surprised to hear that you're 24
• 45:54
  I thought you were probably at least pushing 30, not because of
• 45:56
  your looks. By the way you conduct yourself, you look like
• 45:59
  you've been around the block. You're probably an old soul. And
• 46:02
  I would say that kind of plays into it, very mature but
• 46:07
  charismatic way that you carry yourself, very well liked. Well
• 46:11
  you say old soul. Three favorites, CCR, Tom Petty and
• 46:15
  Alabama. Jeez, dude,
• 46:17
  yeah, really, at least you have good taste in music.
• 46:21
  I've been told, yeah, those are my three favorites. CCR. CCR,
• 46:26
  actually,
• 46:27
  that's really throwing it. That's that's obscure. Yep, I
• 46:30
  have the Bad
• 46:31
  Moon Rising potion right in my wall bathroom on the right. I
• 46:34
  have it all sitting right in my office. Tom Petty love them all.
• 46:37
  We
• 46:37
  just had on my my buddy and I do a podcast called the rich
• 46:41
  Redmond show. He's the drummer for Jason Aldean. We just had
• 46:44
  Stan Lynch on. You're like, who's Stanley? You lost me on
• 46:50
  that one. He was Tom Petty's longtime drummer, okay, for the
• 46:54
  first 20 years. Okay, yeah, huh. He's a guy who kind of stepped
• 46:58
  in Golden piles of crap, gotcha so well, there you go. How do
• 47:02
  you people find and follow you and all those fun things? Is it
• 47:05
  one location, I hope, where they can get on your socials?
• 47:08
  Well, yeah, it makes it super easy. So on our website. So
• 47:11
  there's a difference of so business partner, Nick has junk
• 47:13
  remedy logos. Mine is just junk remedy underscore. Tn more just
• 47:17
  junk remedy Nashville, and it's still gonna pop
• 47:19
  up. It's funny, because it's like, why not make that all in
• 47:22
  one thing that, hey, we just have two locations in Chicago
• 47:25
  and Nashville. You know,
• 47:27
  that was the one thing we really looked at. But the biggest
• 47:29
  difference was with, if I run it here, you can still build SEO
• 47:32
  off of social media, right, right, right. So if I started
• 47:35
  doing it all one lot here, it would mess with his up there. If
• 47:38
  he started doing it up there, it would mess with mine down here.
• 47:41
  So we had to create separates. You know, he has the actual junk
• 47:43
  remedy name, and mine's just either junk remedy Nashville
• 47:46
  Tennessee on Facebook or junk remedy underscore tn on
• 47:51
  Instagram and
• 47:53
  Tiktok. Well, there you go. We got to get all that stuff to me
• 47:55
  so I can put it in the description absolutely normally
• 47:58
  do. And of course, everything will be there if you want to
• 48:00
  listen more to other podcasts and episodes that we've had,
• 48:03
  we've had some pretty great guests, of course, Dan being one
• 48:07
  of them. In the past, we've had Bradley, we've got Mike,
• 48:10
  Mercurio, rich, Redmond, a lot of different guests that
• 48:13
  hopefully have provided some value. Share those out if
• 48:17
  they've made an impact on your life. If you go to mmtbp.com I
• 48:21
  know it's convoluted. Mm, tbp.com mostly Middle Tennessee
• 48:26
  business podcast.com. Is also an option, but I figured the other
• 48:29
  one's probably, you know, five letters versus however many
• 48:31
  letters it is to type in mostly Middle Tennessee Business
• 48:34
  Podcast. I'm a marketing guy. Didn't think too much about the
• 48:38
  name of this thing, but I wanted Middle Tennessee to be the
• 48:40
  marquee star of the podcast. That's why I named it that such.
• 48:44
  So I'm Jim McCarthy, and of course, we produce podcasts here
• 48:48
  with it's your show.co, it is produced by that company. If you
• 48:51
  need something like that, let us know and check out all the
• 48:54
  things there. If you want to be on the podcast, let me know.
• 48:57
  We've got a link on that site as well@mmtbp.com, to be a part of
• 49:02
  this podcast as well. Dan, thanks for coming on, pal. It
• 49:05
  was a pleasure
• 49:05
  to have you good as always. You.