You may wonder, and we get asked a lot, where does all of my junk go? After filling up our trucks during a junk removal job, our first stop is never a landfill. Dumping everything that we load from home, office or any other type of junk removal job is costly and can often hurt the environment. Usually junk removal companies have to pay a fee for the junk that they drop off at landfills. Sacramento Junk Removal Authority works to reduce the amount of waste that they dump at the landfills through several different methods. Find out what happens to your junk after you say goodbye to your clutter and hello to your new-found space.
Donation Stations
Sacramento Junk Removal Authority works with many local charities and donation centers in the area. When you contact Junk Removal Authority for your junk removal needs, we will bring your designated donation items to one of the many facilities that we have a relationship with in the Sacrament area for donation. If you do not have anything marked for donation, Junk Removal Authority will still deliver your large items and things that are easily identifiable for donation to one of the many donation centers in the in Sacramento area.
Sacramento Junk Removal Authority frequently donates items such as furniture, clothing, electronics, housewares, small appliances, tools and more. In addition, Junk Removal Authority will email you a tax-deductible form for your records.
Recycling Centers
The next stop on our trip after the donation center is the recycling centers. There are many different types of recycling centers available, it all depends on what kind of junks. You can recycle Electronics at special E-waste centers. Refrigerators and air conditioners contain CFC’s and need to recycled properly so that those chemicals aren’t released into the environment; California has special laws about the recycling of these goods that Sacramento Junk Removal Authority must follow. Metal can be recycled at scrap yards. Common household recyclables like cardboard, plastics, and glass can go through a recycling center.
Landfills
After we have donated and recycled every bit of your junk that we can, it is time to head to the landfill. Sacramento Junk Removal Authority cares about the environment. We do everything that we can to reduce the amount of waste that we take to the landfills with every junk removal job that we perform. We will continue to look for additional means for our company and our customers to reduce, reuse and recycle. Furthermore, to take care of the environment while removing the junk from our customer’s lives.
Contact Sacramento Junk Removal Authority
Junk Removal Authority is proud to serve the Sacramento area for all of your junk removal needs as well as, recycling, and donation needs. Also, Sacramento Junk Removal Authority can help you to reclaim your space and make junk removal fast and easy.
One of the hardest things to do when first starting your junk removal business is choosing how to price. Do you price by time? By weight? By volume? A hybrid of two or three of those? All of these are approaches used by junk removal companies from time to time.
Time. Many first time customers will believe that you charge based on either weight or time, so it is natural if you think that might be how you should charge as well. The easiest and most straightforward way to charge is just based on the amount of time your job takes plus disposal fees. If you chose to charge this way, you would clock in at the start of the job, clock out at the end, go unload and dump, and then add in the disposal receipts at the end of the job to figure out total cost. You would then either bill the customer or run their credit card. However, there are some issues with this approach.
First, this approach makes it exceedingly difficult or even impossible to give the customer an up-front price. There are simply too many variables involved. What is the weight of the items you are taking? How is the property laid out? Is there any disassembly required? All of these have to be considered.
Another issue with this approach is the fact that the size of the job and location of items could be prohibitively expensive for you or the customer. A simple garage pickup of some light items could see you losing a significant amount of money, while a one-truck attic cleanout could take hours and end up costing the customer over a thousand dollars. For these reasons, the “time plus disposal fees” option just isn’t the best approach.
Weight. What about just charging a flat rate for weight? There is a company in Vancouver called “Junk Rangers” with a very unique concept for this approach: they mount scales on their truck. They take a total weight at the beginning and end of each job and charge per pound. The advantages of this are obvious. As the junk removal business owner, it will be much easier to keep your disposal expense percentage exactly where you want it because your pricing literally depends on the same criteria.
There is an advantage with this route for the customer as well. It is a scientific approach with which the customer cannot really argue. The price per pound is made clear up front and the customer can clearly see their total weight (and therefore price) at the end of the job. However, this method still leaves the customer without a price up front.
Volume. The third common way to price your junk removal franchise is the most frequently used: volume. Price points are set based on fractions of the truck between a minimum and full truckload. If a job will require more than one truckload, the pricing simply restarts for every truckload after the first. A firm price can be provided up front because an experienced Team Leader can accurately quote load sizes after taking a look at items to be removed. Most experienced Team Leaders are almost perfectly accurate. The one drawback to this approach is that there will be the occasionally missed quote. You should expect new team members to misquote a couple jobs as they gain experience (and therefore train these team members before they have to make these quotes on their own). Rarely, a customer may dispute the load size in the back of the truck, but again, this is exceedingly rare.
The volume approach tends to be the best for the customer because they know what they are paying before the job starts. This approach also keeps costs down on some of the more time-consuming jobs, as their increased labor expenses are offset by jobs like garage cleanouts, which are very quick. It’s all about averages. As a result, most junk removal companies price by volume.
Check out this video for a full explanation on setting pricing.
The rest of this article will the steps to choosing to price based on volume. While everything is covered in the video, the main points are summarized here:
If you are new with no prior knowledge of your market and no financial data on which to base your decisions, you should research your competitors’ pricing. You can call other junk removal companies pretending to be a customer. Alternatively, some companies, like Junk King, have their pricing listed online.
Consider factors such as:
Traffic. In areas with high traffic, your trucks will spend more time on the road, increasing labor, fuel, and maintenance costs.
Layout of buildings. Ranch homes can be quickly cleared. High-rise apartments, on the other hand, will require time-consuming removal down hallways and elevators. The longer truck teams are inside a structure, the higher the labor cost and the greater the risk of property damage or employee injury.
Disposal fees. This should be one of the biggest factors in your pricing. In North Carolina, our average disposal cost per ton is about $42. In some areas in the northern United States, disposal fees are more than $100 per ton!
Climate and road salt. Areas with high snowfall (and therefore lots of road salt) will see higher truck maintenance costs. Road salt wreaks havoc on trucks and adverse weather conditions both slow down truck teams and increase accident risk.
Consider the cost of getting a crew on site. Labor costs, wear and tear on the truck, fuel, and time add up to about $70 just to get a truck to a job. Be mindful of this when you set your minimum price point.
Most customers don’t pay any attention to your interior price points – they only care about the minimum and full load charges. This allows you to compete with your minimum and full load rates while still making a profit between those two points.
Don’t restrict your price points to just ¼ load increments. If you load up about ⅓ of a truck, you’d either have to charge the customer significantly too little or significantly too much. Likewise, having 100 different price points makes it impossible for your truck teams to maintain consistency and confuses your customers. Setting 12 price points creates a good balance of fairness in pricing without overwhelming your truck teams or customers.
Don’t make your price curve linear. If your full load rate is $400, your half truck price should not be $200. Instead, pricing should follow a less even curve based on percentages of the full truckload rate. As an example and reference point, the Junk Doctors price points are listed below:
Minimum: $95
1/8: $135 (27%)
1/6: $170 (34%)
¼: $205 (42%)
1/3: $265 (54%)
3/8: $300 (61%)
½: $330 (67%)
5/8: $360 (73%
2/3: $390 (79%)
¾: $420 (85%)
5/6: $460 (94%)
7/8: $475 (97%)
Full: $490
That’s all there is to it. Be sure to like and subscribe on YouTube for more helpful tips, and until next time, go get ‘em!
Not that lots of people recognize that there is cash to be made from garbage. Whether it remains in creating beneficial as well as special things from things people discard or from just offering to get rid of these for others for a charge, you can make loan from junk. Does this mean that installing a business for junk removal in Charleston should be your following undertaking?
Before you begin hauling junk away for others, there a few things you have to take into consideration. Below are a few of the points you require to think of:
Exists a market for such a service in your area?-- This is a question you will should ask, especially if you remain in a location of Charleston that is currently saturated with individuals running the same business. If there are just a couple of business concentrating on junk removal in Charleston, particularly in your component of community, after that this company might extremely well be worth taking into consideration.
Do you have the drive to make such a business prosper?-- Ever become aware of the expression "The mind is ready however the flesh is weak"? Well, if you do not have exactly what it requires to run a company that could be fairly tiring on the body in addition to on the mind, you should consider a few other organisation venture. If you do have just what it takes to make this type of a business be successful, after that you ought to go all out.
Are you ready to find out the ropes?-- Every business has a variety of things that you need to discover in order for it to prosper. In junk removal, as very easy as it might sound, there are really a few conformity certificates as well as training that you could need to go through if you intend to cover all the bases in such a service. You will also should discover ways to run a service that you have and how you can handle people that work for you.
Are you endure sufficient to encounter the ups and downs of a company?-- If you are not worried of dealing with a few obstacles every now and after that, you have exactly what it requires to successfully run a service. Junk removal in Charleston can be really challenging, and also no company ever before rode a wave of success from the get go. If you can ride via the lots of barriers that have running your personal junk hauling service, and also still have the drive to maintain things going, you could be excellent for such an endeavor.
These are just a few of the points you will certainly have to go through your head before you start running a junk removal company in Charleston. Various other challenges you may have to consider when it pertains to such a business include where to obtain individuals for the tasks you will certainly have openings for, where to buy your equipment, and a lot more importantly, where to obtain the resources for such a service. If you have prepared answers for every one of these, then you could safely state that you prepare to obtain right into the junk removal sector in your area.
When you are looking for a profitable company to obtain right into, you would certainly never ever actually believe that hauling junk is one of them. Well, shock, shock. Setting up a business that concentrates on junk removal services in Sacramento might simply be the venture you are trying to find to make you rich. There are a great deal of success tales that focus on hauling junk and exactly how people have ended up being millionaires from waste removal, so why shouldn't your tale become part of such a list?
Obviously, intending to set up junk removal services in Sacramento as well as in fact doing it are 2 extremely various things. There are a couple of things that have to enter appropriate order before you could begin raking in the cash money from your junk hauling tasks. How do you begin? Right here are some points that you need to do:
1. Analyze your target audience-- This is the initial step to a lucrative company concentrating on junk removal services in Sacramento. You will certainly should discover who your target market is, what they need, exactly what they want, and also what they get out of a business such as your own. You ought to also think about scoping out the competitors so you will understand whether or not your firm can hold its very own versus others with the exact same organisation version.
2. Compare franchising with setting up your very own junk hauling organisation-- Some brand-new entrepreneur locate it easier to franchise business instead than to start a company from scratch, and also in reality, it is certainly simpler to perform. Business name is established, the methods included with junk hauling as well as removal is developed, and the devices you need is offered. What might not appear to those who go by doing this is that the satisfaction you receive from seeing your own service succeed, and the reduced expense of not requiring to pay for a franchise business, is in fact a far better choice.
3. Created your service plan-- No organisation can prosper without a plan in place. This will assist you set a couple of vital actions for your organisation to take, such as how you can price your services, whether to employ or subcontract laborers, to rent or buy devices, as well as numerous other such decisions.
4. Obtain funded -Unless you have cash-on-hand to use for beginning your junk removal services in Sacramento, you will certainly should safeguard an organisation funding to obtain points rolling. The funds that you obtain will be made use of in the direction of the purchase or lease of junk hauling devices, training for you and also your employees, and other expenses that your brand-new undertaking might require.
5. Secure all necessary documents and permits-- You will certainly also have to safeguard authorizations and various other paperwork necessary to legally run a business that uses junk removal services in Sacramento. Some of the licenses you will certainly have to have, besides a business permit, unique authorizations for hauling particular types of junk, conformity certificates that the EPA might need for the hauling as well as disposal of toxic products, as well as an employer recognition number, if you are intending on hiring a couple of individuals to function for you. You will additionally needto have insurance coverage for your business along with to cover your staff members.
One of the important things that people generate a great deal of regularly is junk. Whether you are in Sacramento, Kansas, or Atlanta, junk is being made everywhere. Among the tasks a great deal of individuals locate rather daunting and also hard to do is the hauling and also disposal of junk that they have. People that hate such a task often attempt to discover a company that could do this for them, and also this is just one of the numerous factors why you ought to consider installing a company for junk removal in Atlanta.
Having a company that focuses on junk removal throughout the United States is considered a rewarding endeavor mostly due to the fact that not that many individuals really want to carry their junk themselves. There is money to be made in junk and also hauling other people's junk can be a good business for you to think about getting into. Certainly, this is not the only reason why you must enter into such a business, although it is possibly the biggest one.
What other reasons are there for you making that large leap right into producing a business that concentrates on junk removal in Atlanta? Here are several of them:
You obtain to help others-- The satisfaction you get from knowing that you were able to assist an additional individual with a job that they could not manage, also if it was for a fee, is an additional excellent reason for you to get into such a biz. Not every person could quickly take care of the type of work included with hauling as well as taking care of junk. Having the ability to do this will give you the possibility to assist people with a demand that they have as well as at the very same time, it likewise provides you a method to make money.
You obtain to help the community-- Nothing is as unsightly as a pile of junk sitting outside a home, waiting to be hauled away and also to be thrown away. As stated previously, not everyone has the chops or the knowledge to effectively do away with junk that people in some cases wind up accumulating. Eliminating junk that produces an instead undesirable mess in front of residences and offices in your area essentially helps the area because you are maintaining the surroundings tidy as well as making your city a far better location to reside in.
You give individuals jobs-- Being an entrepreneur as well as running a junk removal company in Atlanta means that you will require a couple of other people in order to help you with the services that you use. You could not quite possibly accumulate and also deal with stacks of junk on your very own. You will certainly require a team in order to help you with this. You will certainly likewise require staff to help you respond to calls as well as to approve work for your service. When your enterprise expands, you will need even more individuals to do these jobs, which indicates you will certainly offer even more people tasks.
You reach help the atmosphere-- As a company that specializes in junk removal in Atlanta, you should be cognizant that not all types of junk can as well as ought to be thrown away in a singular way. There are various disposal techniques that require to be followed according to regulations established by the EPA and your neighborhood in addition to state laws. As a supplier of such a service, you obtain to deal with the several different sorts of junk you encounter the best means. This aids avoid contamination of environments and you get to assist the earth by recycling junk that can be reused.
My name is Lee Godbold and I’m the co-founder of Junk Doctors Junk Removal and Hauling and the Junk Removal Authority. With help from my partner, I built Junk Doctors into a $2 Million-a-year business that can literally run without my day to day input, all by the time I was 27 years old. At the time of this writing we have around 30 truck team members, 10 trucks, a Bobcat, and a dump trailer in operation in North Carolina. We’ve got a great organization full of great people and it has made life great for me. I can focus on building JRA now while still getting a hefty paycheck from Junk Doctors. But where did we come from? I can promise you it hasn’t always been airplanes and nice cars.
Before I started Junk Doctors I was working at a roller skating rink making around $15,000 a year and going to school part time. I was also racing NASCAR style race cars. Every extra penny I made went into the racecar. Even then my car wasn’t good enough to be truly competitive. I would go fast and something would break. I’d fix it and then wreck or it would break again. Eventually I ran out of money and sold everything but my pickup truck.
I have always been very driven and entrepreneurial. Always sure that I would be successful, knowing I would work for myself. I didn’t know when or how, but I knew I would figure it out. I tried many businesses before Junk Doctors. There was a flyer delivery business, a mobile airplane washing business, a mobile paper shredding business, a cleaning service, and more. Each one of those failed and each failure taught me lessons that led to the success of Junk Doctors.
I got to thinking that people have junk, I have a truck, and I’m willing to work hard. Until I figure out what I want to do why don’t I put up some Craigslist ads and flyers about hauling junk? I did just that and within the first day I had my first job scheduled. I was charging something like $50 per pickup truck load. So cheap! But I was making more money than I’d ever made and having a blast. I knew two weeks in that I’d found what I’d been looking for. I was going to be a garbage man!
After about two weeks of hauling using just the truck I got to a HUGE yard waste job. I wound up borrowing a 6×12 trailer from my boss at the roller skating rink. The thing had sides that were maybe 6 inches high! Not to be deterred, I stacked that yard waste five feet high and ran ratchet straps all over the place and hauled it to the yard waste facility. Five loads. I think I charged around $800 or $1000. I couldn’t believe I’d made $1,000 in a day. Little did I know that just a few years later I would be consistently making over $10,000 a day!
After about six months of hauling using that no-wall trailer we decided to take a risk and buy a trailer with 3 foot sides. A $1200 risk. Man we were sweating spending that much money. But we bit the bullet and got the trailer. It instantly increased our productivity and allowed us to hang some signs on our trailer (though not very impressive ones).
After using that trailer for around six months we bought ol’ Number 1 from Jacksonville, FL. When we got that first dump truck our productivity went through the roof. We could do five jobs instead of three in a day and would finish the day feeling refreshed rather than dead tired. When someone wanted a same-day pickup we had them covered. We had enough energy to attack that new job with excitement. After being on truck 1 for about 6 months I got off the truck full time and began working on growing our business instead. I began hiring people, advertising, and selling. Once I got off the truck we again increased productivity.
The following year we began a trend of adding one to two trucks a year as we grew. Revenue would double most years. I always wanted to build a business that could be sold and run without me. I didn’t want to have to shut down operations so I could take a vacation. That goal was met by year three. And now I work about 10 hours a week on Junk Doctors compared to about 60 hours a week for Junk Removal Authority. I travel when I want to and I’m always replacing tasks I don’t enjoy doing with stuff I do. That is the purpose of true business ownership.
Now you know how we made it. We want to take you to the same level. We want you to reach success quicker than we did. By partnering with us you will literally remove years from the process. Call us at 919-466-9322 or email lee@junkremovalauthority.com.
Good morning guys. I’m a little bit early to a meeting I’ve got here, so I’ve got a little bit of time. Just recorded a Junk Removal Made Simple episode on the worst mistakes we ever made running our junk removal business. That’s a really great. My hope on it and my goal is that when you all watch that, you’ll avoid making those same mistakes we made. I’d love to know where our business could be if we had avoided those mistakes early on.
When I first reached the point at which I didn’t have to be on the truck all the time, I relished the fact that I had a new freedom to do what I wanted to do. I was making a decent amount of money. I started to settle. I stopped improving the business. I stopped pushing as hard. It only lasted for a month or so, but over just that one month I noticed a decline in business. I noticed I was sleeping in later and I really wasn’t as happy. I went to the beach more and I had more time to spend on my hobbies, but I wasn’t as happy as when I was pushing hard and working towards clear goals.
Growing up, I got into aviation through my dad. Because of the expensive and time-consuming nature of the hobby, most people in aviation are older. As a result, I had the privilege of being friends with a lot of older people. Most of them were in their 60’s when I was a kid. As a grew into a teenager, they grew into their 70’s and 80’s. Many of them have since passed on, but what I remember most about them was their passion and uncompromising determination. These guys were out at the airfield every day, honing their skills and talking about the things they loved and the goals they still wanted to accomplish. Then there was my grandfather.
He had goals and ambitions when he was a younger man. But those days were long past. I began to see the signs as soon as he wasn’t working anymore. Even as a kid, I could tell that the TV had replaced his ambitions. He wasn’t striving for anything anymore. He was retired.
He stopped engaging his mind. He stopped engaging his body. He stopped striving for things that mattered to him. Most importantly, he no longer had goals to strive for. And that’s ultimately what people live for. We’re a species meant to hunger for constant improvement, and though the type and degree of improvement differ from person to person, everyone has to have something to work towards. As soon as we allow ourselves to lose that hunger, that yearning for the thrill of achieving our own goals, we start to lose our purpose.
Without a purpose, a motivating reason to get up every morning, we start sleeping in. Why should we get up when we won’t accomplish anything meaningful? When we start sleeping in too much, we get lazy. Sick. Our energy levels go down. We don’t find joy in the things that once fulfilled us. We’re not happy. Our work, families, friends, and hobbies all miss out on our much-needed attention. We’re still alive, perhaps. But we’re not truly living.
This may seem like an overly bleak or fatalistic outlook, but it’s the truth. Though it may seem like the simplest and most obvious thing in the world, having a purpose for your life is absolutely essential to living a good and enjoyable life. That’s why it’s so important to stay hungry and never settle.
Don’t settle on your income when you hit your target. Set your sights higher – make it five or ten times the amount you’re currently making. Make it a goal that you have to work for – one that makes you a little nervous. After all, if your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough. Write that goal down once or twice a day at the beginning. I write my goals down at the beginning of the day and again at the end of the day. Long-term goals, short-term goals, goals that you want to accomplish that day – write them all down. Remember them. Want them. Be hungry.
Let’s say your goal was to own a home. Once you buy the home, you’re happy. And you should be – you’ve accomplished a very big goal you set for yourself! Chances are, however, that you settled for something about the home. Maybe it was the neighborhood, the layout, or the funky column jutting into the living room. Maybe you discover that the grocery store five minutes down the road doesn’t stock avocados (which is obviously unforgivable). Don’t settle. Make it your goal to fix that funky column, move to a better neighborhood, or live closer to the grocery store that somehow only stocks perfectly ripe avocados.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be happy with your home. After all, if you’re never happy with the life you’re building, there’s no point to building it either. There’s a balance to be struck here. Enjoy the present and remember all the work you’ve put in to get where you are. Just know that as corny as it may sound, life really is about the journey more than the destination. Remember being a kid and staring at the toy catalog for weeks, saving up pocket change and birthday money a little at a time to finally buy it? Oftentimes the excitement of wanting the toy, obsessing over it, and imagining it was greater than the feeling of actually possessing it.
If you’re completely happy with your home and it’s everything you want, do you just stop and rest on your laurels? Of course not! Just find the next part of your life you want to improve. Maybe it’s your vehicle. Maybe it’s your body. Maybe it’s your relationship; that’s the hard one. With everything else going on in your life, you have to make sure you’re not being complacent in your relationship. That you’re not taking the other person for granted. That you’re really pushing hard and that you’re trying to keep the heat in that relationship going. You’re intentionally setting aside time just for that person and for your relationship. When I plan my day out (and I plan the entire day in advance), I plan out the time that I’m going to spend with my wife.
Then there’s your business. I enjoy flying. I enjoyed cars. But growing my business, seeing it flourish, seeing how many people I can help through my work – that’s what gives me the most pleasure in life. So I’ve poured my heart and soul into this business and it’s done wonders for my goals. I achieved my five-year goal a couple years early. I’m on track to hit my ten-year goal by year five. When I hit that, I’ll be setting another ten-year goal. I’ll be doing that at least five or ten times – and hopefully even more than that!
You see, the only reason you ever settle is because you convince yourself that your dreams and ambitions are unattainable. You may have gotten sick and tired of all the disappointments along the way. That’s tough. But disappointments happen all the time, and they’re simply teaching tools; stepping stones on the path to success. There may be hundreds of these little steps, and with so much to accomplish it’s possible to psych yourself out, to start believing that your dreams can’t happen. Break that long-term goal into little pieces and tackle one at a time. Sometimes they won’t go so well. Sometimes they’ll hurt, bad. Disappointment might last days or weeks. But you can’t settle, you can’t give in to the easy way out and give up. Because if you choose to be hungry, to chase those goals and keep pounding even through the really bad days, you’re gonna get there. And you’re going to be at your happiest through it all.
You’re going to feel your best and have the most energy when you’re working towards a goal. As they say at Men’s Wearhouse, I guarantee it. Everybody, have a wonderful day. Don’t settle for a good day. Chase after that great day, that extra one percent. Be hungry. Chase after your ambitions and make all your dreams and aspirations come true. When they do, set more goals. I’ll talk to everybody soon.
Manage your people with kid gloves. Don’t create a high pressure environment. Make sure people leave on time. Pull people up, don’t push them! All of these previous sentences are littered throughout business books. Books written by college professors and managers of large corporations. It’s a bunch of bologna. No if, and, butts about it. It’s crap. You’ve done a great job building your junk removal business by the sweat of your brow. You are now at the point where you got to kick it into the next gear. The only way to do that is to start hiring more people. But it is imperative that you get the same or better results from them as you got from yourself. And, always remember one thing. The reason you hire anybody is for profits. It is to make you or your business partners more money. That is it. Get rid of any pie in the sky mentality that you want to hire people in order to provide needed jobs to people and better your community. Don’t kid yourself. You need people to make your company more money. That’s it.
Here are the keys to managing your people to get them to make you the most Guala Guala.
Understand that you hired them to make you more money: Don’t ever hire someone because you feel sorry for them. That will never turn out well. Instead you will start feeling sorry for yourself that you ever hired them in the first place. You hire people to save you time and make you more money.
Train them to properly do their job: Make sure you have documented training manuals and a well thought out training program complete with checklists to ensure no training is missed. You are setting your team members up for failure if you don’t properly train them. Train them to meet or exceed your well documented work standards.
Monitor them to make sure they are doing their job correctly through meeting and occasional supervision: Once a week have them meet with you or their manager/team and have them outline tasks and deadlines for the week ahead. When they are new check in with them daily to monitor progress. Once they are more established you won’t have to check over them as closely. If they still require close supervision after months of working with your company they might want to find another position or another job. You should have people that can complete tasks and meet deadlines without direct supervision. In the case of truck team members you should ensure they are placing courtesy calls, do customer follow up calls, check over truck cleanliness, make sure they are getting review requests out, etc. Everyone should have firing orders on what they are expected to do and you should be ensuring they are carrying out those tasks completely.
Call them out on anything they are doing wrong: Let them know if anything is not being done correctly. Make sure they know how to do the job properly. Meet with them a time or two. If they can’t fix it then you might want to get rid of them or find them a different position they would be better suited for. Remember, all tasks are important. If you let them slip on one task they could very well slip on another.
Hold regular performance evaluations: Make it clear to them that they know how they are doing and what they need to do to improve. If you aren’t meeting with them they don’t think you care. If they think you don’t care then they won’t care. Not a good thing.
Expect your people to meet deadlines and stay however long it takes: By making it clear that your people are expected to meet deadlines and complete their days tasks no matter how long it takes you will find that people will become more efficient. They will cut out the extra long lunches, the water cooler talks, the extra coffee break, etc. They will still focused on achieving their task. If they have to stay way late all the time you need to look into their efficiency and try to help them get things done quicker so they don’t have to stay late all the time. That isn’t good for their family life. And if their family life suffers. And if they suffer and get depressed their work will suffer. Not good. Also, if they are hourly you are paying them for the extra time. Also, not good. Expect your people to complete their tasks every day no matter what.
Turnover is a good thing: Nothing kicks people into high gear and puts them on their toes than a constant round of hiring. Treat your organization like a college basketball team. Be constantly bringing in the best people you can. Train them up and see how they perform relative to others in your organization. The ones that perform the best get the playing time. The ones that don’t ride the bench or get cut. Management books caution against turnover. I like it. I like constantly bringing people in and kicking people that can’t perform out. Bring em’ in. Kick em’ out. This has been the greatest change we’ve ever made to managing our people. We had guys that just did as little as possible to get a pay check become kick ass team members from this one change. They saw new people coming in and passing them. They didn’t like it and got motivated to perform. Turnover is a good thing. Always be hiring!
Longevity doesn’t matter: Experience matters. Longevity doesn’t. Experience can make you make better decisions. A motivated and experienced team member is worth more than a motivated and inexperienced team member. However, longevity doesn’t matter. The present is all that matters. If you have a two month guy who is outperforming a five year guy then the two month guy should get the PT or the spot. The five year guy needs to pickup his game or leave the organization. If you have a five or ten year guy in your sites and they tell you or act like they deserve it because they have been with you for ten years. Because they have been so good for ten years. Make sure they understand that you appreciate what they did int he past but presents results matter. Either pickup your game or leave.
Everyone, including you, goes lame: All race horses go lame. All employees, including you go lame as well. It is important that when anyone goes lame you try to figure out why. Is it something that can be corrected? Are they simply bored? Can you move them to a different position to get them re-enthused? You will lose interest in doing certain things within your business as well. It is important at that point to hire someone to do the task you aren’t interested in doing anymore. Otherwise your whole organization will suffer.
Don’t allow anyone to get to comfortable: This applies to yourself probably more than anyone else. It is easy for the business owner to get comfortable. He has to self motivate himself. He doesn’t have someone threatening to cut his job if his performance slacks. The only way to not get comfortable is to constantly be setting and achieving goals. Every time a goal is achieved you should be ready to have another go back in its place. Always have something you are working towards or your performance will suffer. And as far as your team members make sure they feel the pressure to perform. If they don’t have the pressure they will start to slack off.
Consider tying peoples pay into performance: I do believe in some types of pull management. Try to motivate your people by allowing them to share a piece of the pie. When they perform better they make more money. Come up with a structure where people are rewarded for the success of the company. DO NOT CAP THEIR PAY. If you set up this structure do not cap their pay once they reach a certain level. The only reason this is done is because of selfishness. You don’t want them to make more than a certain amount. Maybe you don’t want them to make more than you. Do not do this. You want your people super motivated. Once they hit their cap they are going to start being resentful. And the late business is just as good as the early business.
Recognize and reward performance that exceeds expectations: Anytime you get someone who is constantly exceeding expectations recognize and reward them. These people are few and far between. Make sure to take care of the few ones you find. Try to promote them into positions if possible.
Always remember you owe it to yourself to have the most profitable business possible: You’ve taken on risk and devoted your entire life on your business. You are always thinking about your business and working a ton on it. Even with your family you are often thinking about your business. Don’t get caught in the trap of cutting team members slack all the time because you “don’t need the money”. That is a bunch of malarkey. You owe it to yourself and your family to make as much money as possible. And you aren’t doing your team members any favors. Expect them to perform and they will enjoy their job much more. And if they don’t you need to get rid of them.
This whole article is pretty ruthless. Your environment should not always be ruthless. It should be filled with a culture that rewards people who are doing well. You should wish people happy birthday and celebrate their work or life successes. But everyone must know that you expect results in your organization. By expecting and enforcing deadlines and results and by constantly bringing in new people, you will find that an organization will form with a crazy good culture that makes a bunch of money. Every business owners dream.
We’ve all thought about it. Unless you have prior business experience it is likely going to be your strategy when you first start your junk removal business. I remember when we first started our junk removal business thinking how ridiculous it was the 1-800-Got-Junk charged $450 for a full load. Preposterous! Who would every pay that?
One of the things you have to know is to have the proper perspective. At the time I was 20 years old and working at a skating rink making about $15,000 a year. My take home pay wasn’t much more than $450 for two weeks of work. Of course it wasn’t worth it to me. I’d do it on my own. Also, I didn’t have a whole lot of stuff to haul off. So I figured if it wasn’t worth it to me it really can’t be worth it to someone else. Disregard the fact that Got Junk at the time already did over $100 Million a year in revenue and had close to 200 locations at that point. I just figured there was no way anyone really wanted to spend that much money on Got Junk. They were the main game in town and we figured we could slip right in there and take away the business just by being cheap.
So we started placing ads on Craigslist. Keep in mind Craigslist was a lot better back then than it is now. Much more widely used. And free. The calls started rolling in and we thought we were making money hand over fist by charging $200 for a pickup truck and trailer load. However, Craigslist customers were a pain to deal with. The jobs were difficult and they customers were so freaking cheap. Some of them were good but most of them were rough and cheap. Also, though we were making good money it still wasn’t enough to really field another crew full time. I was making great money when I was on the truck. Once I got off though the returns were much lower. And work wasn’t consistent enough to have a full time crew either. Jobs could be sporadic from time to time. I needed another way to get more jobs.
At that point I got in touch with a former junk removal company operator who had sold his business. He helped me get set up on Google AdWords. That is when our business really took off. AdWords was simple at that point and much cheaper. However, with our current pricing we weren’t making as much money on AdWords jobs, even though the work was easier and the sales higher. But we had that AdWords expense. We needed to raise prices. But we were scared to do so.
So we were faced with a decision. Do we stop doing AdWords or raise our prices. We raised our prices and… the calls kept coming! We raised prices again and… the calls kept coming! Before we knew it we were making more money and not working nearly as hard. A win-win!
We were incorrect in thinking that the main thing everyone was looking for was price. Yes, some people were looking for price. But many people simply wanted the service to get done and get done fast. Even then we promised same day service. They liked the fact we were locally owned. And we were spending enough on AdWords we were the first person they found. Not being first doesn’t mean you won’t get work from AdWords. You still might get as much business being second or third. But we happened to be first. And people called us. And we were great on the phone so we locked the appointment down.
So, your wondering is there a time you should be the cheapest person in the market? Yes, there are couple of instances. The first one is if you simply don’t have as professional an image. You have an older truck, your site isn’t flashy, and you are very new with little reviews. You might want to be the cheapest in your market at that point. But you must give a reason for you being so cheap! What’s a good reason? “We are the cheapest of the professional junk haulers in this area because the owner is on all the jobs. We are a new company, though our owner, John Doe, has been working for a moving company for years and knows how to move as good as anyone. Since he is on the truck we’ve got much lower overhead than our competitors. That’s why we can be so cheap.” Give them a reason. Otherwise they might come up with their own which is: They don’t offer as good of service.
Another good reason to be the cheapest is you are the most sophisticated junk removal company in your area, and one of the largest. By that I mean you are extremely busy and have a large volume of items that you pick up. You have so much that you are able to open a store. Because you have so much volume your store stays very busy from selling the stuff you get from your junk removal jobs. You also can take advantage of economies of scale and make great money by separating your metals and recycling as much as possible. So you are getting income on the back end as well as the front. Because of this you are able to charge customers less because you will make up the difference when you re-sell or recycle the items you pick up. Be up front and honest about this. Market the hell out of it on your website. This is a major competitive advantage.
Of these two scenarios one is temporary. That one be scenario 1. The second one is permanent. The key with the second one though is the fact you have to have a huge volume of business to do this. Otherwise you will never sell enough for it to be worth your time on a consistent basis. I think you need at minimum $1 Million a year in sales to do this and probably closer to 1.5.
What are the other negatives to going the cheap route with your junk removal franchise? The problem is there is no way to reach enough people. You could have the cheapest and best junk removal business on the planet. But if nobody knows about you then what’s the point? When you have minuscule margins you can’t afford to do AdWords, SEO, Customer Acquisition Management (CAM), or other advertising services to get the word out.
Another issue with going cheap is the fact that the customers that hire the cheapest in the market simply because they are the cheapest generally are not good repeat business. It’s hard to build a thriving business when you are constantly having to get new customers. Customers that hire you because you can get to them fast or are the most professional are much more likely to review, refer, and re-use you. These are the people you want to go after.
Yet another reason is the fact that it is tough for you to pay someone else to work on the truck. To pay a full crew would really make it tough to profit much money. That means that you are going to struggle to answer the phone which means missed appointments. That means that if you want to take off work you likely won’t be able to run another truck. Do this long term and it will be a huge strain on your life and your relationships.
One thing you must remember is you are a businessman. You are not a garbage man. By being a business man one of your primary goals should be to create a business that runs without you. Without profit margins from charging a high enough price you will be unable to do this. You will be unable to hire people to answer your phones (or the JRA call center), to manage your books, to dispatch your crews, etc. Your business will never be one that you could sell for a huge payoff. It isn’t as good of a business as it could be to pass down to your kids. You, at that point, mainly have a job. And a job with no benefits and no paid time off. You are a slave to your work. If you are going to do that you might as well work for someone else with 90 percent less stress.
The alternative to this is to charge enough for you to make a healthy profit on each job you do. You will then be able to advertise to reach a bunch of people, who will re-use and tell others about your business. Before you know it you will have people in all the different departments of your business. You will then have the freedom to do what you want to do when you want to do it. At that point you will begin having a life where you can fully focus on excelling with your business, with your relationship with kids/spouse, your physical body, and your spirituality. You will have flexibility and freedom. That should be one of your primary reasons for getting in business. But to achieve that you must charge enough for your services for sure.
We here at JRA are here to help you achieve financial and life freedom with your junk removal business. We built Junk Doctors to a $2 Million a year business by year 5 and are ready to do our best to get you to that same level. Junk Removal is a great business to be in if it is ran right. If it isn’t you will enjoy it for a while before you get burnt out. Let JRA show you and manage your advertising, sales, job booking, bookkeeping, or get your new business open. Simply call us at 919-466-9322 or visit junkremovalauthority.com.
The best way to start a junk removal business is when you have money. You can make all the big investments up front and that will really help propel you to success much quicker than when you have to actually live off the income from your junk removal business. So how do you get started cheap?
DON’T UNLESS YOU HAVE TOO!
The easiest way to start cheap is don’t! If you have a job making around $50,000 a year plus keep working that job until you have enough money to do a downpayment on your truck and have another $10,000 in the bank to help cover some operating losses when you get started. Or, see if you can raise the money from friends or family.
When you first start your business don’t quit that job. Keep working your number one income while you build up your business. Only when your business is really taking off do you quit. And even then often times it is better to hire truck team members and continue working your main job. It took me three years before I made $50,000 in a year off of junk removal. You can really grow the fastest if you are able to live off other income and just break even or even lose some money the first year or so of your junk removal business. That will really set you up for massive future success. I’d consider quitting your job once you were making close to what you are making at your current job. And even then I’d think long and hard about it.
Remember, you aren’t getting into the junk removal business because you just love going around and hauling peoples trash. Your getting into the business to fricken make some Guala! Don’t cut your income by starting your new business. Work both at the same time!
If you have too, here is how
Step 1: Live cheap
In order to live off the income of your junk removal business while simultaneously growing your company you need to start out by living cheap. Have a roomate or two and keep your rent low. Then be ready to live off ramen noodles for at least the first year. Sell your car. Your main transportation is going to be your truck. Tell your girlfriend it’s gonna be netflix and chill for the next year. And let her know if she wants to spend time with you she better ride around with you in the truck and help you out on the job. You are serious about your success and are willing to do whatever it takes to make this business work.
Step 2: Get a truck
So if you don’t make around $50,000 a year and don’t have friends and family willing to lend the money, you will need to get started the way Junk Doctors did… cheap! The first thing you will need to do is get a truck. And you are doing this cheap so don’t go too crazy! Find a pickup truck and get a 6×12 trailer with 5 foot sides. That whole rig should be able to be gotten for around $5,000. The pickup around $4,000 and the trailer around $1,000. You could be a bit over that depending on your market but you should be able to find something for around $5,000.
Step 3: Build a basic site
Go to Wix.com to build a basic site. You can do this using a basic template and a few hours of your time. All of this can be done for a few hundred dollars. Do a cheap logo. Nothing fancy. Put your face on the site and tell a little bit about you. Try and get the people who want to use the real small time operator and help give a guy his start. This strategy will be abandoned and changed as you get larger. Also, make sure to add your site to Google places.
Step 4: Order Yard Signs
Go to kustomprintz.com to order some yard signs cheap. Place them in prominent intersections and ask you customers at the end of the job if you can place them in their yard.
Step 5: Do the free/cheap advertising
Post Craigslist ads daily. Get set up on nextdoor.com and post periodically talking about your service. Monitor any neighbors on nextdoor.com asking about junk removal services.
Step 6: Sell baby, sell
Pick up the phone and call professional organizers. Stop by real estate offices to introduce yourself and drop off your business card. Go to Home Service Trade Shows and introduce yourself to the remodelers in your area. Let them know you haul junk and would love to haul off their debris. Give everyone you know a business card. And get involved in social media. Make sure all of your Facebook friends know you are in the junk hauling business.
Step 7: Answer the phone
Make grabbing the phone before it goes to voicemail a priority. If you miss a call then call back immediately. And you need to answer that phone no matter what you are doing. Sleeping, in the shower, having sex. Doesn’t matter. You need to grab the phone. And you better prepare. If your gonna have sex have that phone where you can grab it and a water nearby. Don’t be answering the phone out of breath.
Step 8: Save that money so you can invest it soon
Keep living cheap once you are actually making some money. Put that money into an account and leave it alone. Remember, you bought a $4,000 pickup. That think isn’t gonna last long. You need to stack up some money to invest in your business. Get $5,000 saved up first so you can get JRA to build you a website. Your next objective needs to get another $5,000 or so saved up to get started on Customer Acquisition Management (CAM). Following that you would then look at upgrading or adding another truck, this time a dump.
The order can vary some for sure. And yes, I’m plugging JRA services. That is because I 100 percent believe that is the best route for you to take. We built our business up to a $2 Million a year business by year 5 from doing much of what I talked about here. Except we wasted a bunch of money too learning. With JRA you get all that experience and expertise. So much cheaper than having to learn what works and doesn’t work on your own.
Step 9: Grow, grow, grow
Your number one objective needs to be to grow the business. Put off short term profits for long term gains. Remember, your goal should be to build a business that runs without you. That means you will have to put off several years of profits in order to keep re-investing in equipment and people to get your business where it can run without you. At that point you will be making more money and have more freedom than you’ve ever had in your whole life. And you also have a business that is worth some Muuulah! And that, my friend, is why you got into business for yourself. Freedom and money. And, oh how sweet it is.
Other Notes
Don’t be afraid to get a second part time job while you are building your business. Work at night, offer landscaping or delivery of items. Do whatever you have to do to make money. Remember, you aren’t simply building a junk removal business. You are wanting to make yourself successful. That’s the overall objective. That means hustle as hard as you can and get that income up. Then invest in the growth of your business.
The three big factors that JRA focuses on improving for our customer’s are their AdWords results, their organic placement, and customer reviews. Improving AdWords and SEO is expensive. To do a good job you would spend at minimum $2,000 a month to improve AdWords and SEO. However, simply getting good reviews and more reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, Angie’s List, Home Advisor, Thumb Tack and more can increase your business tremendously. The best part, it’s free! Almost nothing in this business works well when it is free. Getting lots of good reviews is free (or darn near close to it) and can have a huge impact for your business.
So, how exactly do you get better reviews? It’s a multi step process.
> Get lots of customers
> Obviously if you don’t have the jobs then you won’t have the opportunity to get lots of reviews. You need to be on AdWords and doing SEO. However, Adwords will run you out of house and home if you try to self manage. You will get lots of clicks for things you don’t do. Just kiss that money good bye. You also need to be getting exposure through every avenue you can.
> Do great work
> Show up when you say you are coming. Give them a firm price up front. Work quickly and carefully. Sweep up when done. Do all the little things and the big things right. You won’t get good reviews if you don’t do good work, obviously. And customers are really much more likely to post a review if you do an excellent job.
> Ask for the review
> Studies have shown you get over 80 percent more reviews when you ask the customer to leave a review. Some providers are hesitant to do this as they feel they are coming off pushy. Nonsense. You have just done this customer a huge favor, something they are glad they didn’t have to do. You have done a great job. Many customers want to do whatever they can do to help you. So after you accept payment ask the customer something like this: “John, thank you so much for your business today. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to be able to send you an email with links to leave us a review. Would you be willing to let us know and other potential customers know how we did today? Would that be OK?” If they say yes then respond back and say, “Excellent, John. I look forward to reading what you have to say.” That last little bit is very subtle. But that last line is huge. You have thanked them for a service they have not yet completed. They will be much more likely to follow up and actually post the review now.
> Have a standard email and follow the rules
> You need to have a standard email you send to your customers that thanks them for the business and asks them to click on a link of their choice below to post a review. Yelp doesn’t allow you to ask a customer for a review or send a link so don’t. Google used to allow you to only send links to customers that ranked you highly. They no longer do that now. You must send a link to all customers once you have asked them to rate your service. There used to be some services you could use that would send customers who give a negative star rating to a feedback page and send customers who are happy to Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc. Google no longer allows that.
> Reward team members for getting reviews
> Once you are off the truck one of the hardest things is getting your team members to ask the customer to leave a review. You might need to reward them for getting reviews otherwise they will quit asking for them.
Once you have great reviews the chances of a customer booking goes way up. It is a great way to increase the results you are getting from AdWords and SEO. Many customers will click on your ad, view your site, go back to Google to then look at reviews, and look at your organic placement as well. If you have a good website, a good Ad, and good organic placement you still might miss out on a lot of customers who want to see proof that you do good work. Testimonials on your website won’t cut it. You need Google reviews, Yelp reviews, and reviews on other advertising platforms that you use. Just because you have a great site doesn’t mean you will get the business if you don’t have the great reviews. However, if you have great reviews but your site isn’t as good you could still very well get the job. I don’t recommend that route but it is used as an example of how important reviews are.
Close those deals guys and let’s blow up your business in 2018.
