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Owned and Operated #187 - Junk Removal as a Scalable Business? #187
Looking to grow your junk removal business or expand your service-based company? In this episode uncover actionable business strategies, marketing hacks, and scaling secrets that fuel sustainable growth in the service industry. From humble beginnings during the pandemic to building a mission-driven brand, Walter shares his blueprint for success and the powerful role of community impact.
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Episode Hosts: 🎤
Jack Carr: @TheHVACJack on X
🎙️ Episode Guest:🗣️
Walter Hindman - LinkedIn
Ep 187 Transcript
Walter Hyman: [00:00:00] Driving around my beat up pickup truck. I'm holding people's trash in my hometown. I'm trying to get some of these donations to some people that need it. Like we got press pretty fast. That really blew us up in the
Jack Carr: first, like three months, two plus hours in flight time. W what were you thinking? If I were to do it over again, I don't think I would do it.
John Wilson: One of the things that's helped our business grow the most has been peer groups, and that's been for both myself and our leaders, being able to talk to other companies about exactly how they've solved. The problems that I'm dealing with today has just been instrumental, whether it's how to acquire companies or how to add new locations, how to hire directors or service managers.
Or what should compensation look like? All of those things are things that can be solved by just asking people a little bit ahead of you. Inside that group, we have Fireside Chats, weekly peer Conversations by business size resources to help you grow your business and a lot more. Make sure you check out owned and operated.com and click on Join Pro.
Jack Carr: Welcome [00:01:00] back to Owned and Operated. Today we have a awesome special episode for you guys. John is out and in his place. We have the one, the only, Walter Hyman. How you doing, Walter? Good. I love the intro. Like I said, I, if you listen to the show, you know, I've missed my calling. Um, so Walter runs Junk Drop, which is a, there's.
Three locations across the us, two in Texas, and one here locally in Nashville. Walter and I have met up before to chat business. Let's start off with why junk?
Walter Hyman: Yeah, that's a good question. So I, I graduated college in 2020. Great timing. I know. Terrible timing. So I, uh, I graduated in 2020. I basically got my diploma emailed to me as a PDF.
And I had a job lined up in New York. Mm-hmm. And at the time, New York City was like the epicenter of Covid. And I got my job offer recent and I had to figure out what I was gonna do. So I moved back home with my parents and had to do basically the most humbling thing I've ever had to [00:02:00] do, which is drive around your hometown in a pickup truck.
And offer to pick up your friends and friends. Family's trash.
Jack Carr: So, so, but why, why that? Right? Because I mean, there's a lot of people that went through the exact same thing you went through and instead of going the trash route, they went window washing, or they went pressure washing. You know, there's a lot of different, or they drove for Uber or Lyft, like there's a lot of different paths you could have taken.
Why did you land on junk?
Walter Hyman: Yeah, it's middle ticket. It's not low ticket, like maybe cleaning or, or window washing or landscaping. It's a little bit higher up, but the startup capital is, is really limited. So all you need basically is a pickup truck to get started and you can end up getting jobs that do become higher tickets, so you can get jobs that are 1, 2, 3, you know, we've done now in Nashville and we're four years, then we've done jobs that are $20,000.
Wow. Um, and so you can get, you can get bigger jobs, but also the startup capital is, is [00:03:00] pretty limited. Um, and so I knew that I did want to have some niche that I could differentiate myself with. And so I, in high school, I volunteered at a, uh, organization. It's called a Wasted Center. It's a 5 0 1 C3. It's a charity.
And they had an organization that, um, it's called Rapid Rehousing, where they found people that, um, were formerly homeless, but they moved them into a new place and they, they helped get them situated. And I just had the idea of if I remove people's stuff, a lot of the stuff I'm gonna get is going to be reusable.
So I reached out to them and I was like, Hey, if we get any good reusable stuff, do any of your recipients want it? I'll store it. I'll deliver it. I'll set it up. And so we started doing that and we started posting it on social media. We started posting it on Nextdoor and showing our clients directly where their stuff went, and try to be as transparent as we possibly could.
And. You know, people sort of rallied behind that and that's kinda how we grew from the beginning.
Jack Carr: Okay. So, so in the beginning the model was the stuff that we are pulling from junk. 'cause most of junk, I mean, when I [00:04:00] think of junk, a lot of times, I mean I'm, my mind instantaneously goes to trash. Like you're picking up and doing those, those kind of remodels that you see on houses where it's just destroyed.
That's not what you're talking about. You're talking about something else.
Walter Hyman: Yeah, it's a mixed bag. I mean, there's a lot of different. Demographics that we get that want a lot of different stuff gone. Mm-hmm. I mean, it, it's pretty crazy, especially in this age of Amazon, where you can get anything delivered to your home the next day, whether it's a sofa, a mattress, a box spring, and you know, junker removal kind of used to be people just downsizing or moving or cleaning out their a attic.
But especially during Covid, when it became, everyone became sort of more materialistic. People got the stimulus tracks. People are getting sofas delivered. They're working from home, they're looking around their place and they're seeing stuff that they may might want. New stuff, new desk, new dresser, whatever it was.
And a lot of times people just buy stuff online and then they have to get rid of the old stuff, or they'll redo a a room and they'll want the old stuff gone. So in that situation, a lot of [00:05:00] those items are good. Reusable dresser, nightstand, tv. Bed items like that.
Jack Carr: Awesome. And so they pay you to pick it up and then you go and you deliver it to a family in need and.
Awesome. I mean, that's a really cool model in terms of having the ability to give back, but also, I mean, you're different, right? That's a differentiation than the rest of the junk companies that are just gonna throw it in the landfill somewhere. Okay. So first year, you know, you launched in 2020. Let's dig into some numbers a little bit, right?
So you, you, you started this in, in 2020. What was your first year? What did that look like? In terms of just top line?
Walter Hyman: Yeah, top line. So. Um, a lot of times when I listen to podcasts like this, I listen to people and like they say numbers and I'm like, those numbers are crazy. Yeah. So you might be, you might hear these numbers and be like, yeah, that sounds pretty small, which is true.
We got lucky at the very beginning in that we got press pretty fast due to the fact that we got, um, in the Tennesseean, we got in the Nashville scene, things like that. That [00:06:00] really blew us up in the first like three months. And that's due to the fact that we had the donation logistic niche. So we differentiated ourself in a philanthropic niche that people gravitated towards, which got us a ton of pr.
Mm-hmm. So I think we would've probably made, if we just did it boots on the ground, gorilla Marketing, maybe a little Google Ads spend, we probably would've made 150. But I think the first year we did like. I think it was 3 75.
Jack Carr: Okay. Our first year. I mean, that's amazing. Um, right. I I know you said little.
Yeah. But realistically, if you were to look at any kind of, anybody starting up any business in plumbing and hvac, I mean, that's generally where people who are successful now, that's kind of how their first year went. It was a right around that, that four to $500,000 mark and there's enough when it's just you and your buddy, uh, in the beginning.
Right. There's enough net in there to really start to, to get the ball rolling. So. Yeah. So the first year's working out, I mean, I assume it's working out 'cause you're using your own truck, you are paying yourself probably a base salary [00:07:00] and then most of it's going back into the business. Or did you just ball out?
Walter Hyman: Yeah, we paid, we had a role where we paid each other $300 a week for like the first like year. But then we would go on random trips and then spend like two grand and be like, we'll never do that again. Like, and then come back to the middle at some point. But we were really. Like when we were in Nashville, we were super disciplined.
And that's one of the nice things about having a co-founder is you guys can really hold each other accountable in finances. Where you can say, Hey, I'm, I'm only spending this much. So you should also really spend this much. And especially at the very beginning when money is super tight, especially if you bootstrap, you don't take out any loans and ESBA loans, you got no backers.
It's just you guys in pickup and F1 fifties, you know, driving around your hometown. Um, you know, then you can really like reinvest back into the business, start getting box trucks. Start getting better wraps, start doing better marketing, start hiring people that you know, clients are gonna love. And then, and then actually scale.
And, and that's what we did for the first, [00:08:00] I mean, for, for a while, honestly,
Jack Carr: too. Cool. And so, so now we're at that spot. Um, you, you reinvested, oh, what does year two look like?
Walter Hyman: The first like one to two years we had like this huge wave of press because what we would do is we, would, we, we had the first article come out, isn't the Tennesseean.
And they basically told our story of, Hey, these are local guys who drive around the pickup truck. It, they're gonna remove your stuff for next to nothing. And they put, unfortunately, they put our pricing in there. 'cause at the time the pricing was way too low. I mean, it was brutally low. We're like $80, the pickup truck or something.
And then we're like, I wish they didn't print that. 'cause now we have to charge you $80 to pickup for the next year and a half. But, but basically we used that as leverage and then post it on social media, all the donations we started doing. And then what we would do is we would reach back out to all of the other, uh, news outlet outlets, like News Channel five, news channel two, the national scene.
And we'd say, Hey, look at this article that we did. We'd love to come in, in person, in student time, kind of pitch what we're doing. You know, we're [00:09:00] young, we're trying our hardest, we're hauling trash. We're humble dudes. And we're donating stuff, right? And it's a story that a lot of people were looking for.
And, and once we had that leverage that we were able to articulate our story pretty well. We, we went on LinkedIn, we found every single person that worked at all those news outlets and then we hammered them. And that really, really took it off. And so, and so what we did was sort of unique in that, like we used the press to have fuel to the fire because I remember the first two years we thought that market spending money on marketing was.
Throwing money away. We thought it was like literally just giving Google money. It doesn't make any sense. And obviously that press didn't last forever, right? You have a huge spike of the news and you see, you check your Google Analytics and you're getting way more hits on your website, but that doesn't last forever.
People forget, and then eventually we like had to start spending money on marketing and he is like. That we shouldn't have to do this. It's like, no, that's how, that's how it usually is supposed to be.
Jack Carr: That's how most businesses work. Right. Is is you have to start at some point. Uh, was do you view that as an advantage or a disadvantage?
[00:10:00] Because I mean, in, in some sense, right? The, some businesses, I, I guess in, in the sense, right, if you were a startup plumber or a startup pest control guy, like you probably started with friends and family, but you at really early on you had to understand the marketing. Switches and the keys. Otherwise you wouldn't grow to whatever your year two is.
You wouldn't get to that $1 million mark.
Walter Hyman: Right. I think a lot of that was luck. But then also what, what turned out and you know, we were doing this press stuff just to get mm-hmm. The press and then hindsight's 2020 looking back, we got a lot of back links that we didn't even realize get. Oh yeah.
Jack Carr: I didn't even think of that from an SEO perspective.
That's amazing. Yeah.
Walter Hyman: And so to have those back links. Early on, put us at like number three in Google on like a year in mm-hmm. And we're like, we're getting all this traffic to our website. Like I don't, I don't understand how this is difficult for other, we just got really lucky is the bottom line, the very beginning with the press and having that donation logistic niche.
[00:11:00] But I don't think you necessarily, if you are a young entrepreneur, I don't think, or even older entrepreneur, I think you don't even necessarily need that donation philanthropic thing. I think, uh, there's a lot of people that like. Want to hear your story. I mean, if you watch the news, they're running, every single news outlet is running 10 stories a night on 10 different things.
They have to run those stories constantly and they're looking for one or two feel good stories about someone that has a landscaping company and they cut the grass of the elderly lady next door where they've got a HV, you know, they've got HVAC company and they provide, they've provided piping to a charity for free.
Little things like that, and, and they have to run these stories so. Um, I think we did get lucky in the philanthropic niche that is like baked into the business, but I, I do think that like these people have to run stories.
Jack Carr: Yeah. It's a 24 7 news cycle, so they have to fill it with something. And so from a, a grassroots gorilla PR perspective doing, if you're doing good things anyway, [00:12:00] which most of us business owners naturally do, we have somebody who's in a hard time, even though we're running business, we don't.
Let them suffer. Like why not reach out to them and say, Hey, this is what we're doing. We'd love a segment. And what, what did that pitch look like? Other than like, Hey, another story is running this. Like how if you were to blind pitch something like that, how would you reach out and say, Hey, you know, we're just doing this cool thing, or, or do you actually go in for the, the sale and, and close there?
It's,
Walter Hyman: that's a good question. I a hundred percent led with as much humility as I possibly could. I would say, Hey, I'm 22 years old. I'm driving around my beat up pickup truck. I'm holding people's trash in my hometown. I'm trying to get some of these donations to some people that need it. Like what advice would you give, basically?
Mm-hmm. And that works so well. 'cause people genuinely want to help. But I think the problem now, especially with social media and people posting and trying to say that they're at a certain status, whatever, like everyone's trying to [00:13:00] posture mm-hmm. To be. Mm-hmm. Like, I'm in this position, I'm this business owner or whatever.
But people don't really wanna run a story on that. If you say, Hey, like I took a huge risk, you know, my, my wife is here with me. We're working really hard at this company. We're showing up to our client's home. We're shaking their hand. My wife is like baking them cookies. Yeah. Right. And leading with humility.
Like they really love the humility aspect. It, it's not even the philanthropic aspect as much as like, I'm young, I'm in my twenties, I'm picking up trash in my hometown. Yeah,
Jack Carr: yeah, yeah. Right.
Walter Hyman: And, and I think people really eat that up.
Jack Carr: And, and so at some point you get a, an idea that, hey, we're doing okay at one location, let's do more.
And not only let's do more locations, let's do more locations. Multiple states away, two plus hours in flight time. Yeah. What were you thinking and how's it going?
Walter Hyman: I don't know. [00:14:00] It's going pretty well. It's going pretty well. I, I think, um, if I were to do it over again, I don't think I would do it.
Jack Carr: Yeah,
Walter Hyman: I don't think I would do it.
I think it's just too much of a headache. And I know there's people to listen to this podcast. Like my fiance and I, we would drive around all the time and she would like. Wanna put in the, the Lumineers or Zach, Brian, I'd be like, throw on the o and o. I need some, I want, I wanna listen to O and operate.
And so I would listen to a lot of these stories and I would try to like, I would try to think like, if I'm ever on this, like what is something tangible that I would want to hear, you know, as a business owner. Not just like, oh, you know, we're making this much money and like, you know, maybe just numbers, but like, what's something tangible that I'd wanna hear?
And I wish I would've listened to myself this maybe a few years back and. Stick locally. Mm-hmm. You know, we're in a space where we're not actually doing that bad anymore, but the beginning was
John Wilson: brutal, man. Yeah.
Walter Hyman: I mean, the number of flights I had take down to Austin, like the number of people down there that you get a manager and you're like, okay, this guy's [00:15:00] great.
And then it turns out that guy's stealing from you or a truck breaks down and you're two states away, or a client is upset 'cause you didn't get all their stuff and the employees are saying you did. I mean there's, there's really infinite things that can. That can actually go wrong. And um, I would actually rather start another home service business in my hometown.
Mm-hmm. And, um, maybe use the same lot. You can use economies of scale, use the same virtual assistant locally. Uh, maybe you can use a truck for multiple use cases. I don't know. I think that genuinely makes more senses, makes more sense, at least in the junk mobile space. There might be some that work tangentially.
That are better remotely. Like I know cleaning people say that you can do that remotely pretty well. Um, but junk removal isn't one of 'em. Yeah.
Jack Carr: Yeah. I mean, I, I definitely agree with you on this one. Um, how, how big were you? Like, what was your, like how many people or, or however you want to use metrics on it, how big were you when you decided to, to go [00:16:00] and was it a startup or did you buy a company down there?
Walter Hyman: Um, it, it was a startup, so four, we had just had four guys full-time in Nashville and then people doing backend, social mediaing, the phones and things like that. But four guys on the trucks, two teams. Um, and I was like, well, let's just throw up another team. Just two guys. Super limited expenses. I'll just buy these trucks, man.
It's just, it's just like constant headaches of things going on. Um, and we are in a lot better spot now. Yeah. But well, you have to be
Jack Carr: right. You, you have to get into a lot better spot or like, you wouldn't own it there Yeah. Anymore after a certain amount of time. Totally. So like, I'm glad, I'm glad it's finally overcame that, that thing.
Um, or that, that difficulty.
Walter Hyman: Right. Also, one of the things we did in Houston that actually worked really, really well was we started with demand first, and that's really hard to do. So we, we got a Google My Business profile and switched it over to our branding, our website, our phone number, and we immediately started getting leads.
Um, and so we found a Google My Business page, it [00:17:00] had like 450 reviews. It ranked super well, but we clicked on the frequency at which they got those reviews, and the last review they got was like a year ago. Mm-hmm. And so I go on LinkedIn, can't find the guy, go on Facebook, find like a friend of a friend.
I found a dude that used to be a co-owners Instagram and I messaged him and I was like, Hey, it looks like you are outta the business. And he was like, yeah, I am. And and I was like, I understand you let all your employees go. You got outta your commercial lease. You maybe sold your website, but there's still an asset there in the Google My Business page that's getting leads and there's a lot of people.
That just fit on these Google My Business pages. Maybe not in HVAC or high ticket businesses as much, but I guarantee you locally, wherever someone is listening to this, there's a landscaping company. There might be a smaller pest control company. There might be a junk removal company, maybe a moving company, maybe a pressure washing company that ranks really well.
It's got 185 reviews. It shows up to the top of the main keyword, which is junk removal, Nashville [00:18:00] pressure washing, Charlotte, whatever the main keyword is. It shows up pretty high, and their last review was a year ago. And if you can find the owner of that and somehow get that Google My Business page, this might be a slightly, slightly unethical tip.
You know, I don't, I don't know the legality behind it. It's worked for us. Um, but, but you can do it. I mean, 'cause technically you're acquiring that business, right? If you get a contract that says we're acquiring this business, one of your assets is to Google my business page and the phone number on the website, you route from that number to your number.
You route the URL to your URL. And then you change the GMB page and you're immediately getting leads. Day one. Yeah. That's
Jack Carr: definitely not unethical. I mean, that's the same, the, this game has been played in a different fashion. Uh, when I talk to the old timers who run businesses in the home service space, they've been doing this for years where they will, um, right specifically with the, the, in hvac, with the.
The sticker on the unit, if they go to and see an old junkie beat up sticker with a name they'd never heard [00:19:00] before. They would use to pay their texts to bring them those numbers, and then they'd call 'em and they'd call 'em. If they couldn't get ahold of them right, then they'd go and they actually buy the phone number from the phone company.
So that, that, now that on the other hand may maybe a little bit on the more unethical side, but like. The game at least, has been played. And now the fact that you're actually paying the old owner for the asset, like I think that's still a win, um, on both sides. 'cause he was just gonna shut down. Like the, the guy in Houston was just never gonna do anything with it.
And instead it continues to get to good use. And you have a great asset now and he has a little bit of money in his, in his pocket. So that's a good strategy. And, and I think that's something that's, that's overlooked. Uh, specifically the review function. That's really interesting that you found that like, Hey, I'm gonna look at when the last review was and then I'm gonna go from there.
Because I think a lot of times people just start on either databases from the city or, or licensure or you know, backend, but you're actually going in and cold calling or cold finding people [00:20:00] based on review frequency.
Walter Hyman: Right? I think you phrased that really well. Um, I just spend a lot of time on, on Google reviews and companies.
You're a small home service
Jack Carr: business owner. You spend way too much time thinking about Google Overlords. That's what it is.
John Wilson: Yeah, totally. A hundred percent. So the latest thing that we've been working on is maximizing our LSAs, which is local service ads, and also optimizing our Google My Business profiles.
So what that means is we're making sure that all of our LSAs are on when we need them, and they're maximized to give us the best ROI. And then for GMBs, it's been partnering with service scalers to drive. Way more traffic through our GMBs. GMBs are almost like the new SEO. The more you put onto them, the better the performance.
So our GMBs have been consistently getting better week after week after week, and it is our currently, our single most impactful. Organic lead channel. So we'll [00:21:00] sell hundreds of thousands of dollars a week through our GMBs. And I think last week we got 900 phone calls. So really impactful, awesome investment, and we've been able to partner with Service scalers on both of those things.
If you wanna hear a little bit more about Service scalers, check out service scalers.com.
Walter Hyman: I think, I don't know if it was your podcast or another podcast, but someone was talking about, it was A-H-V-A-C company owner in Vegas that grew to like $80 million a year by buying phone numbers. Yeah, every time a company, and, and this is back in the day and Google's the new, exactly what you just said.
Google is the 21st century version of this, but he would basically buy the yellow page phone number every time A-H-V-A-D company went outta business and route it to his phone number. And eventually he looked up after 30 years and he is got 80 numbers that a bunch of old ladies put on their, on their refrigerator for decades, and they forgot about and they wrote down and they said, these guys are great.
Call this number. And I think the Google My Business page is, is the 21st entry version of that, of that phone [00:22:00] number of Josh. Yeah. I think it
Jack Carr: even, it even means more in. For you in, in kind of this, this industry, I, I bet that a decent portion of the people that you work for are reoccurring, but at the same time that there's no set length of guaranteed reoccur.
I mean, there's not an HVAC either, but we try to put people on maintenance contracts for biannual service and things like that. So we stay at the top of the mind every kind of twice a year. Whereas with junk removal, I would imagine like. You call someone once and then you probably don't call that phone number for another two to three years.
Walter Hyman: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of people that try to estimate like what the LTV is for like junk removal and moving and that's, it's impossible to do. Like there's sometimes you just need to not look at data and I think that's one of those situations It's 'cause it's like it's still case by case. I mean, you'll have one client that like, yeah, they're staying in the same home.
They use you every six months. Okay, well then you know exactly what the LTB is, right? They use you every six months when they clean out the garage. But there's so [00:23:00] many random cases of people moving into town. Moving outta town. Their mom died. Their uncle died. Yeah. They gotta clean out the whole place.
And those jobs are like four times the ticket up just to sofa removal. So it's like, I think it's really hard in junk removal specifically to figure out LTV for something that can usually, the, the ticket variations. There's so much delta, like they vary so much and the jobs are so random. I think it's really hard to like.
Have a PPP strategy and be like, okay, well our LTV is this. It's like, you don't really know that. You know what I mean? At least in the junk removal vertical.
Jack Carr: But yeah, that makes sense. I mean, that makes sense why you would go after GMBs and, and I feel like, I mean, once again, this, this could be incorrect.
Um, how often are you seeing other. Businesses like junk removal businesses, how often are they going out of business versus selling? It's, it's not, I guess in the terms of home service. The home service bubble, right? We are already unsexy as [00:24:00] it is, but the junk removal is one of those kind of tier two, tier three kind of, um.
That people, I don't think, initially think of when they think of home services. So are are you seeing that there's a lot of older owners that are getting out or what, what's kind of the, the age range of, of the current, um, market ownership as well as, are they exiting or, or are, are most of the new owners, newer owners?
Walter Hyman: Right. Well, I think it comes down to barrier of entry and ticket size. So the barrier of entry for a cleaning company or a junk removal company or a, or a pressure washing company is, can you buy a pressure washing? Generator and a truck. And the same with junk removal. As a truck, a cleaning company, can you buy cleaning supplies?
And so there are companies that rack up hundreds of reviews. They've got a great Google My Business presence that are some lady that has a cleaning company and she's been doing it for six years and then her son's going to college and she wants to just, yeah, get out. She doesn't even wanna sell it. She just might wanna get out.
And the same with junk removal, [00:25:00] junk in a truck, some, you know, redneck and F-150, just like me, you know, has been doing it for a few years. And he, you know, he racked up, I mean, he's been doing it for five years. He's got substantial GMB presence in organic URL profile that Google sees and they see that he's answering the phone all the time.
He doesn't have like a like, and so Google can see these things. They can see the organic and a lot of times these people, they're not selling, they might just sell the trailer and like let their one other employee go. Or there are two other employees to go or just get outta the commercial lease. The vast majority of of business owners, at least as you said in those tier two tier threes, they're not looking to get an exit.
They don't know what the multiple they could get, what would be, and a lot of times life just happens and they get the way and they don't take the Google My Business page down and then you're looking at a page that's getting clicked. It's getting phone calls and it's going to nothing. And so that's why you can get a really, really good deal on that.
Google My Business page is 'cause they don't even think they have an underlying asset there. They understand they can get four grand [00:26:00] to their trailer. They understand. They understand they can sell their cleaning supplies for a couple hundred bucks and the press your washing machine for a couple hundred bucks, but they don't understand that they can sell their Google My Business page for X amount.
Jack Carr: So if you were to buy a Google Business page with a hundred reviews, 150 reviews, what, how are you evaluating that for. Purchases because there is value, but like the way that we do it for tuck-ins, like that's actually one of the, the assets we pull in in tuck-ins is we, we look for their Google business page, we want the phone number, and then we want the book of business.
But our valuation is based on customer acquisition cost across how many customers you have. Whereas if you're just buying the Google business page, it's kind of, it's kind of hard to, yeah, hard to evaluate that. Where would,
Walter Hyman: it depends how scale it is. If, if it's 'cause Google has an algorithm, if it's really stale, then you're basically just paying per review.
Okay. You know what I mean? So if it's really stale, then Google understands that that's not getting a lot of friction. So if [00:27:00] it's over a year and it's gotten zero reviews, Google knows that and Google's on the side of the client that's looking for that service. So they're gonna rank that business super low on the GMB, but it still has an underlying asset.
'cause you could revamp that, you could start getting more reviews. Mm-hmm. And then Google will start picking it back up again. And you're not starting zero reviews.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And so where do you, yeah, where, where do you put that at though? Like, how, how do you, how do you value it? Like what are you paying for
Walter Hyman: these?
I paid a thousand bucks for the GB with 500 reviews, which is a pretty good deal. Um, but it, it like, but he didn't realize he, he probably would've taken 500 or he didn't know there was money there. And so it's about like, they don't have. They don't understand that there's value. So, um, it depends. If they understand that there's value behind it and they're like, Hey, this thing, it wasn't active two months ago and it's getting you three calls and I know my CAC is a hundred dollars per call, then they might be able to like, create a multiple and like, give you an actual valuation of like, you're getting this many [00:28:00] customers, I know how much they're worth, and then they'll give you a real number.
But that's probably not, at least in the tier two, tier three, that's probably not gonna happen. Yeah,
Jack Carr: it's an interesting way to look at it. 'cause and then probably an accurate valuation because realistically, like you said, it's also a pa, like it's a passive source and there's something that you have to do to actually get it to function correctly.
You have to revamp the entire profile. Profile, right. It's. Not, it's like, it's like a fix and flip almost on a, on a truck or on a house. Like there's actual work that needs to go into it to get it back to par.
Walter Hyman: Yeah, it needs a head gasket for
Jack Carr: sure.
Walter Hyman: It's not alternator, it's a head gasket. But that was a long way to
Jack Carr: talk about your shop in Houston.
So, but like you started in Houston, you bought this one and it's actually starting to like send. Leads and you're like, oh, I actually have to hire a team, I guess, or what, what was the next step?
Walter Hyman: Well, we have a guy that we contracted jobs out to in Houston, and so we just do a 50 50 split. Perfect. Um, and we put him in the same CM that we have in Austin.
We have the same call center. So I'm paying, I mean, the guy that's already [00:29:00] answering the phone, I just implemented him into that system and I split up a website and it's the same CRM as Austin, but it's just a different location. Um. Yeah, and it, it's pretty linear. It's not super complicated, but it's definitely not like printing money by any means.
It does like maybe 1500, 2000 a week, so not much.
Jack Carr: I mean, money's money, especially with all you're doing is lead gen for it. Lead gen, and then covering is salary to answer the phones, which is. Is it overseas? Oh yeah, it's overseas. So I mean, that's a huge win. Yeah, I mean, I think anyway, if you could line up 10 of those, you would tomorrow.
'cause generally I think those would be a lot easier. Yeah, sure. You, you're not worrying about the truck, you're not worrying about the owner doing X, Y, or Z. It's just. Lead Gen Ryan, make sure you have a really good Che GPT contract with the 90 nines sweet man. So, so now you're on year what? Five? Four? Five?
Uh, it'll be year five in August. Okay, so year five in August. What, what does the business look like now? Three locations. What's top line look like?
Walter Hyman: It? Junk removals. [00:30:00] This seasonal business, it's similar to landscaping, where in the spring and summer we do double the revenue that we do in winter. And in the winter we do about 1500 to $2,000 a day.
And then in the spring and summer we double the workforce. So we go from two guys to four guys typically, and not every year. Some years we stay with four guys the whole year round. Some guys and then years is two guys. Uh, but generally we double from the winter to the spring and summer to four guys. And the spring and summer we do between three to four grand a day.
Um, and we don't work on weekdays. So you can kind do the math there.
Jack Carr: So like what, what's changed in your business in terms of like initiatives? So in the beginning you were worried about, Hey, I needed to start marketing, and then in the middle you're like, oh, maybe I should start a different location. But like, what are you focused on right now in terms of, uh, junk drop?
Walter Hyman: We're really focusing on the donation aspects. We double clicked on that. We've had a partnership with Mallory Yin. She's like a big influencer mom influencer here in Nashville. She's got like a million followers. So we're [00:31:00] doing hard social push with the donation logistic. Mm-hmm. Niche. Uh, and that's worked really well for us.
So we, we, we published all the content that we make when we furnish the homes with our client stuff, and so the clients can kind of see the items that we removed in the home of someone that actually needs it. Um, and so we've made a big initiative with that in the past, like six months and kind of grown our following online.
And yeah, I mean, the, the social following helps so much. We don't have a crazy big social following. It's like 4,500 or something, but it's, it's all like moms in Nashville. And so it's the exact demographic of people that we want, and we've done a good job of the jab, jab right hook of providing great content that they're constantly looking at of us furnishing homes for recipients and that philanthropic aspect to feel good, and then also offering our value proposition at the end of, if you book, you know, $20 off or whatever the call to action ends up being.
I love, love it. That works really well for us because I, I, yeah. Because the, the [00:32:00] Google game man is impossible. It, I think it, I think it's impossible because at least in junk removal, it depends vertical to vertical, but it basically is a game of supply demands. If there is enough supply of businesses that are bidding on the same 35 keywords, main keywords, then most people search junk removal, Nashville, Nashville haulers, Nashville, jump pickup, whatever it is.
If there are enough businesses bidding on those keywords. It will not be profitable for you to to bid on those boards if that is the dynamic and in Nashville, in Austin. It that is the dynamic in junk removal, at least. 'cause we're low ticket, right? Like an HVEC, plumbing and electrical. You know, you might have upsell and there's, yeah, there's more to the game.
Jack Carr: But I mean, for the most part, agree. We don't, we don't do PPC either because all the big players will bid up the words to, you know, 6, 7, 8, a thousand dollars. And I've actually seen that with a lot of people who we've talked to through and owned and operated is that plumbing, hvac, all the water heater keywords are all [00:33:00] utilized.
Um. And abused on terms of the, the price points. Because as a larger company that maybe has the three massive three verticals, plumbing, hvac, electrical, like the lifetime value of that customer is over a hundred thousand. So like I can lose money on this vertical and then make money on my other two verticals just over the next 10 years.
So not, not uncommon across, I think all verticals as the big players will overpay to grab market share. Um, that being said, the game then becomes like. Hey, how do I move my, my money into different verticals that will also produce ROI, right? TikTok Facebook. And in your case, you, you went back to what you know and love it sounds like, and that is pr like purely moving through a PR function.
But I mean that honestly, that's what worked for you in the beginning and it's still working for you now. So I, I love that idea. Very smart out of the box thinking to, to do partnerships and. Um, yeah, totally. [00:34:00] What's interesting is, like, my, my, my theory on the entire home service industry is as we continue on into the next 10 years, Google loses ownership of the lead gen market.
Mm-hmm. And what we see, I mean, I think it was, um, there's a gentleman vast, oh, I'm gonna totally butcher his name, Houston Next Gen down in Anaheim. Um, but he, he was talking about. The next 10 years is gonna be about content. Like, if you're at a a party, what do you seeing someone do? They're swiping through their TikTok or they're on, you know, their phone here, or they're on their phone there, and it's, it's all about marketing and, and digital content.
And so the fact that you guys are already ahead, like producing this content and have this amazing content machine where you're like, oh, like part of our business is recording. Installing this in people's houses, in like the feelgood aspect. I think that's amazing. Like, that's gonna kill. Thank you, man.
Walter Hyman: Yeah, we have a um, we have a requirement. The guys have to get three pieces of content every day. Two pictures of one [00:35:00] video, and then donations. They just have to get as much as they possibly can. Um, and then they put in Slack and you've got a content guy on the back end that gets it, and then he chops it up.
He puts it through Canva. Puts the logo on it. Problem
Jack Carr: that I have is like, how do I convince six plumbers to take pictures and videos for, for what they view as funsies? You know what I mean? It's hard enough. Hundred percent. I've been pushing on them with 20 hard $5 spiffs to get picture reviews. You know how many picture reviews we've gotten?
Like two or three, like 25 bucks. Yeah. It's hard for a picture review, but they're like, I don't know what to take pictures of and not, you know, it's like a whole thing. It becomes a a thing. Yeah. Even though it's the correct thing, it's still like a management thing to like have to push through as a change management.
So I, I was actually thinking today what we're gonna probably end up doing is just hiring a videographer. Yeah. And then I'm gonna take a week and then put, put them on a ride along with every single person in the company, including myself, so that we have pictures and videos of just [00:36:00] day-to-day activity.
Walter Hyman: And the quality will be way better though. Yeah. And I
Jack Carr: think that with, uh, with seven days, 12 days, 15 days of footage, I think that's enough. B-roll that could last me for a long time. 'cause that's what it comes down to is like, how do you get the B-roll? How do you have the picture of the guy working on the sink at the time he's working on the sink?
So.
Walter Hyman: We, and part of it is just the demographic of people that I have working for me. It's usually guys in their early twenties that are also on Instagram, and they follow us and they get excited about it, you know, and so. Like, we've got younger guys that are on Instagram and they see this stuff and the way that the guy edits it, it, it just looks yeah, fun and cool and the guys enjoy that.
And so it's kind of full circle. And
Jack Carr: so, okay, so junk drop. What's the next step? Like what, what, what's your goals here in the next year, three years? What are you trying to, to grow this too? Or is that even the goal?
Walter Hyman: I mean, the goal with every entrepreneur that's running a business is to continually, every single day take one step back.
And if you're running a business perfectly, which is like almost [00:37:00] impossible, but if you're running a business perfectly, you'll get into a position where you don't need to be involved at all in the business runs itself. And and it's hard. It's hard. I mean, obviously way harder to do than actually say, but that is the goal with Jump Drop, is to get into a position where every single day we're taking one step outta the business.
You do that with hiring someone to drive the truck. And then someone to take the pictures and then someone to answer the phones, and then someone to work the thing around and someone to do, to do the system that
Jack Carr: then the guy that takes the pictures takes the pictures from your team. Right. And then you don't have to be in the loop.
Okay. So, so you are not necessarily a hundred percent focused on drunk drop. Your goal is still growth with the company. Like you don't ever wanna see it fail, which, I mean, I can, I can understand 'cause we, I do owned and operated now as well, but at the same time, yeah. In terms of your time management, you're saying.
I'm going to to do something else as well.
Walter Hyman: Well, we we're starting a company called Local Lytic. So what it does, it's based on keyword. So for example, junk removal, Nashville, it'll copy all the reviews that every single business gets for all time. [00:38:00] So it'll say, here are the top 20 businesses, here's how many reviews they've gotten in the past month.
You can see the at which these businesses are getting the reviews. You can see who's growing the fastest. And you can also see the seasonality of the business. So say there was. Uh, a hundred reviews left for that niche for junk removal Nashville last week. You got five of them, your competitor got eight, another competitor got 15.
So you can see the total addressable market and the percent of that pie chart that you're taking up based on review totals. Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: For
Walter Hyman: example. Um, and then you can also see inside those reviews what you're doing really well and what you're doing for Lisa. We basically copy all those reviews. We essentially just dump them into chat.
GPT, it's a little bit different. It's LLM, but we say create a SWOT analysis for what this business is doing really well. Their strengths, their weaknesses, their opportunities, and their threats versus the market. And so it'll say you're doing professionalism really, really great and your timeliness is incredible, um, price, but your price [00:39:00] communication could use some work that's super interesting.
Exactly. And it'll, yeah, and it'll compare it to your competitors and they'll say in your market, right, for HVAC, Nashville. Yeah, the market as the whole, the strength are this, the weaknesses are this, opportunities are this, and the threats are this. And they'll say for HVAC, pricing is a big issue. People are concerned about pricing.
They say it's not clarified really well. Um, but they do say that the professionalism is great. A lot of these guys show up and RAD vehicles with the polos and the iPads, and they're doing an incredible job, professionalism, and it'll give you an idea of real, tangible things that you can take into your business.
And implement to know what you're doing well and what you're doing poorly and what you can improve on. Um, and so we, I really just created this for myself because I have a junk removal company and I'm super, super competitive and my other best with other junk removal companies. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I feel like every other business owner is the same way where they're like, yeah, okay.
Other [00:40:00] people are using other joke removal companies. I get that. That's maybe a marketing problem. That's a branding problem. That's a sales issue, I guess. How many people are doing that, right? Do I take 15% of the market, 80% of the market, 20% of the market, and what are they doing well that I can implement?
And a lot of that data is baked into the reviews. Um, and so we extrapolate them and we create like a really pretty UI that you can look at. You can see, you know exactly how many you got compared to your competitors relative growth. You can see. Businesses that are creeping up. For example, we did HVC in in Nashville, and you see, okay, cooling only has 600 reviews, for example.
They're not even a threat to lead company or Hiller or maybe some of the really big guys, right? But then you see the, the relative growth is incredibly high because they got all those reviews in the past six months. 'cause private equity came in and they bought every single billboard in the city. So you could see that like, and you wouldn't be able to tell that by just searching HBAC companies in Nashville.
'cause you would just see the total [00:41:00] number of reviews. So it's just a cool way to visualize reviews and then get tangible data out of it in order to figure out what's implement in your business. Yeah,
Jack Carr: I mean, there's, there's an interesting use case there that, that I don't think we see very often is the ability to go in and look at feedback from customers, not only for your business, but on a macro level across an industry and a, and a location where, you know, we, a lot of times we get.
These complaints of, Hey, you know, your, your pricing is okay here, but over in this, this zip code, it's too high or something of the sort. And so that would be very interesting to be able to break down which, what percentage of which GMB is doing. Like what, what's the feedback from each GMB comparatively.
And I bet that that would be one of 'em. So super cool. And so is that what you're doing now? Like. Okay.
Walter Hyman: Yeah, I'm working on that mostly. Okay. Another cool thing that we've [00:42:00] figured out is the seasonality. So as I said, joke removal is a seasonal business. The winner is half of what it is in the spring and summer.
You can see, okay, are we just slow? 'cause every business owner has this question, are we just slow this month or is everyone else slow? That's something I would constantly ask myself when we ended up doing lot jobs than we thought. So what you can do is you can figure out, okay, there was a thousand reviews left this month for junk removal in Nashville.
We only got a hundred, everyone else got 900, but versus last year, that number was 700 total reviews. So you can see the seasonality, you can see trends. What's busy February, March? Business trends. Yeah, trends. A hundred percent. And you, and you compare that to the year before to understand, okay, everyone else is slow.
I'm doing fine. And I, and I can kind of
Jack Carr: calm down. Super interesting. Well, awesome. You know, I love getting to dig into some of these different industries, Walter. I mean like. Junk removal is one of those ones that that is, you know it, it's definitely unique in our home service [00:43:00] field and it's really cool that we got to talk about it today.
So we talked about, yeah man, we talked about you making, get why you got into a junk removal in the first place. Talked about your growth story trajectory, why you wouldn't go multi-state again, if you had the chance and if you did, you'd probably stick to utilizing as a lead gen source. And then we talked about, uh, marketing and a little bit about analytics, but it's called local lytics.
Um, so very cool. Yeah. I'm gonna have to check that out after this. Um, if people want to find you or learn more about local lytics or just more about talk about junk, um, where can they find you at?
Walter Hyman: Yeah, you can find me on Twitter. It's Walt Russell oh two. I only have 300 followers, so I'll, I'll, uh, I'll DM you if you, if you add me.
You can go, if you want to try out the beta of local lytics, you can go to beta local, lytics do co and we're doing free for like the first month for everybody. We wanna just provide [00:44:00] so much value that people wanna keep coming back and eventually wanna pay. Um, but we're testing out the beta right now, so as I said, it's completely free.
You can figure out the competitive landscape of, of where you are hyper locally, and. Uh, yeah, you can check that online.
Jack Carr: I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on today. And if you like what you heard today, make sure to leave us five stars wherever you listen to this wonderful podcast. Head on over to owned and operated.com.
Check out the workshops, check out owned and operated pro. We've got so much stuff going on my head spinning. They keep me busy around here. So I appreciate y'all for listening and thank you Walter, once again. Uh. See y'all later.
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